Error 404: Translation Unavailable
by Nytewing
Summary: "Help me." She asked and so he woke up and scared off the pilot fish. Only it was too early and he paid for it with a small (light, hardly even worth mentioning really) neural implosion. It all should have been fixed when he woke up. Except, now he's talking to some awfully bold Sycorax and no one understands a bleeding word he's saying. The TARDIS is less helpful than hoped.
1. It's All Semantics

A/N: I recently began a rewatch of the entire series and y'all I have /ideas/. So, I don't expect this will be the last DW fic I post.

**Chapter 1: It's All Semantics**

Language is a funny thing. A billion species, give or take a few hundred million depending on the year, roamed the cosmos speaking and signing and scenting and projecting upwards of a trillion languages. Modes of communication were as varied as the species that originated them; humans with their spoken words and their manual signs, Rexflorians with the colorful lights across their petals, any number of insectoid species dancing though ended conversations. The Doctor loved them all and even before he was the Doctor he had spent years of his life learning as many languages as he could wrap his brain around. Of course there would always be many beyond his reach; he lacked the dual vocal cords needed to produce Glinerian harmonies and a Gallifreyan nose simply was not sensitive enough to pick out the subtle chemical difference between nitroazobenzene carboxyl chloride (radiant happiness) and nitroazobenzene carboxyl _di _chloride (incandescent fury) of the Hutera. The inability did not bother him, in fact, it was almost nice to know that the universe was filled with wonders beyond even a Gallifreyan's comprehension.

So, the young man who would one day become the Doctor spent his evenings tucked away in the depths of the archives, reading every grammar and dictionary he could get his hands on. The other students at the Academy did not understand his fascination. They pointed out that he didn't need to know these languages; they were all going to be granted TARDIS after all. The ships core contained all the knowledge of every language in the universe and would translate for them. They need never speak anything but Gallifreyan. He didn't say anything, he was a shy boy in those days, but he thought that was a rather old fashioned way of thinking. No, he didn't _need _to learn about other languages, but he wanted to. Besides, he told himself when they had once again left him alone, the TARDIS might translate for them, but somethings were untranslatable and the idea of missing out on a joke or clever turn of phrase was appalling. So he spent his time alone and he learned. He was gifted with an unusually efficient brain, even for a future Time Lord and generally need only read a grammar once to understand. Soon, he had read every tome on offer in the archives and there were hundreds, thousands of languages clamoring for attention in his head. He loved it.

Then, he took the final exams and was granted two of the three things he wanted most in the world; the title of Time Lord and the ability to choose who he would be.

In the second year of nights spent devouring languages he'd found an entire shelf filled with grammars of the languages of a no account little world. He marveled at the number. Seven thousand languages spoken by only a handful of a billion people? It was unheard of. He did not know it at the time, but this was his first encounter with the world that would become the closest thing to a second home he would ever know. He spent the better part of the next three months working his way through the collection of languages. One night, long after the second sun had set and the rest of the archives emptied, he began reading about the Indo-European language family. The family was nothing special, not really. The phonemes were fairly standard for the vocal architecture of the species and the grammar was nothing he hadn't seen before. But, there was a word. _Doctor. _The word was strikingly similar across the family, especially in the later texts he could find.

Doctor.

It sang to him. He looked it up in Macedonian (lekar), in Zulu (udokotela), in Welsh (meddyg). He loved every single version of the word and the idea behind it. The meanings shifted ever so slightly in every translation he found. A learned person. A healer. A confidant. An expert.

A friend.

So, years later, when he stood before the council, nervous and proud and ready to take his place as a Time Lord, he knew exactly what word he was going to choose as his title. He knew they expected him to choose something in Gallifreyan, everyone did. But, that wasn't what he wanted. He did not want to take a name and retreat back to the Archives. He'd had enough of reading and experiencing the universe through others eyes. He wanted to go and see and help people all for himself.

His mentor asked him the question. Who was he? Who would he be?

He smiled and spoke, in English and in Esperanto and in Tok Pisin. He layered the word over itself in his mind in every language he knew. Languages of Earth and Raxacoricofallapatorius and Mondas and Aractus and hundreds more and through the entire word he wove the Gallifreyan concept.

"I am the Doctor."

Just now, nine hundred some odd years and nine regenerations later, he was desperately trying to recall that phrase. It had been written on his very soul. No matter how the council tried to argue with him, to convince him to choose something more befitting of his potential, he'd not relented.

And now.

Now, he could remember nights spent alone in the archives, little fingers rapidly flipping through ancient pages. He could remember carefully forming new words, angling his lips just so and the fierce joy that had filled him when he got it right.

But, he could not find the words themselves.

It had taken him nearly a full minute aboard the Sycorax ship to realize that no one was responding to anything he was saying. He had just told the leader of the invading ship to wait his turn and asked Rose how he looked and she was just staring at him. Her eyes were wide and fearful, not of him, never of him, but for him. Because, he realized in that moment, he'd not been speaking English.

It had been years since he spoke Gallifreyan.

"Rose?" he tried to say. But all that came out was, well it ostensibly the closest approximation to the flower that could be found on Gallifrey. But, there were a few notes in there that certainly did not belong in the name of anyone with whom he was just friends.

"Right," he said. "Right. Okay. Well, then, we'll just have to do this the old fashioned way." The sentence flooded from him, a melody of anxiety and determination. He made his way past the leader, talking about everything and nothing until he reached the large button that had been calling his name ever since he glimpsed it from the corner of his eye. Oh, the humans were not going to be happy about this, he thought. He did his best to project reassuring thoughts in their general direction. Perhaps one of them was more telepathically open.

Then, he pressed the button. There was a general cry of anguish from the humans and he looked over. Rose stood with her mouth slightly open and her eyes shining. He shook his head and pointed to the Sycorax leader.

The alien spoke, words the Doctor did not recognize but the man standing beside Harriet Jones translated them. Suddenly everyone relaxed and he knew they understood. Good, he wasn't about to be killed the next time he landed in the UK. Rose was grinning up at him now and his new hearts stuttered in his chest. Oh, that was the same as before then.

He looked around the ship, trying to find a solution to the issue at hand that didn't rely on his gob. His eyes lit upon the swords strapped to each warrior. Well, that would do nicely. Time to test if he'd gotten a fighting body or not.

* * *

As the TARDIS settled into the Vortex, Rose found herself unable to tear her gaze away from the Doctor. The frenetic energy he'd displayed aboard the Sycorax ship and after as he ranted incomprehensibly at Harriet Jones seemed to have mostly dissipated, leaving him looking thin and grey. He rested his hands on the controls in front of him and stared absently at the screen.

"Doctor?" She took a few steps towards him. Her voice seemed to shake him from his daze and he looked up, a wild grin crossing his new face. She smiled back, though she knew hers was far more tremulous.

"Are you alright, Doctor?" She was close now, though she hesitated to reach out and touch.

He opened his mouth and a stream of lilting syllables tumbled out. He stopped talking and frowned.

"Oh," Rose said, "I'd sorta hoped the TARDIS would fix that." He stared at her blankly. He'd just opened his mouth again, probably to speak more musical nonsense Rose thought, when a huge yawn caught him by surprise. Rose giggled. He just looked so startled by it. He smiled at her. Not the wild look of a few moments ago or the grim smile he'd worn after realizing no one on the Sycorax ship could understand him, this was the closest to the tiny quirk of the lips her previous Doctor had worn so rarely. She treasured those little smiles, small and rare and all hers. It looked like home in a way Rose couldn't put into words. Suddenly, she needed to reassure herself that he was here and he was real, even if he appeared to be having some sort of language problem. She surged across the final few between them and wrapped her arms around him. He was skinnier than she was used to, and a little taller, all sharp angles and movement where he had been sturdy strength. He smelled right though. Like spices and old books and the TARDIS and something she couldn't name.

He was still her Doctor.

"We'll figure out what's happening, Doctor," she promised. He pressed his face into her hair and a few more unintelligible words slipped out. She hugged tighter. After a few moments she forced herself to stand back, holding him out at arm's length.

"Alright," she said, "You're going to go to bed and sleep for at least eight hours! None of that Time Lord I don't need sleep nonsense. You lost your hand today!" She carefully avoided the fact that he'd also sort of died today. That was a thought that was going to give her enough nightmares without voicing it aloud. He made a complicated series of gestures that appeared to mean, '_ I have no idea what you're saying Rose Tyler, but I am also very tired so we will figure it out in the morning _'. Or, at least that was what she was choosing to believe they meant because after a moment he sighed and turned on his heel, heading into the depths of the TARDIS to hopefully seek out the bedroom she'd never seen him use.

As soon as he was gone she spun to the monitor. "Okay, we're going to figure this out," she told the TARDIS sternly. "I know he translated for me before, but he can't do that right now, so you're going to have to work with me." The screen remained frustratingly blank. She growled.

The most frustrating bit was that she knew, _knew _deep in her gut that she would have been able to understand him not twenty-four hours ago. With the heart of the TARDIS burning her up from the inside she had seen the entirety of the Universe and there was something familiar about the Doctor's strange language. She tried to recall it, but her memories from those terrifying, exhilarating minutes were wreathed in a flame too bright for her to see through. She detached the screen from its housing and crossed to the jump seat. It wasn't the most comfortable place to sit, but she figured this might take a while.

She pulled her feet up under herself and wrapped her hoodie tighter around herself. The edges were slightly damp from the mixed ash and snow of the Sycorax ship and she shivered. Two senses warred in her. On one hand, she understood where Harriet Jones was coming from. It had been terrible waiting to see if the Doctor would ever wake up, trying to do what she thought he would do, and then the joy of seeing him followed by the fear of knowing there was something terribly wrong. Of course the Prime Minister felt like she had to make the hard choice to keep the entire planet safe. But, a large part of Rose rebelled against the idea that the Earth was only safe if they killed people. That wasn't the way she and the Doctor did things and she did not like the idea of her homeworld being like the bad guys they'd stopped so many times over the last year.

Once again she wished she was still the Bad Wolf. Everything had made sense then, no uncertainty, no questions. Just the knowledge of what she needed to do and the ability to do it.

Suddenly, a spark of yellow light leapt from her fingers to the monitor in her hands and the screen lit up. It was still covered in the circular symbols of the Doctor's written language, but it was at least on. She made a mental note to ask him about the little spark of light when they could talk again. It hadn't hurt, in fact it felt like _home _in the same way the TARDIS did, but she knew better than to ignore odd occurrences like that.

"Right." She paused to consider her path forward here. She'd only taken a few years of foreign languages in school (the less said about her French the better really), but she remembered the first few lessons. Greetings. That was a safe spot to start.

"Can you show me how to say good morning in your language?" she asked the TARDIS. Immediately the symbols on the screen changed. Now, there was a single large circle with a few smaller circles inside and lines crossing between them. As she watched the symbol shifted slightly.

"Why's it moving?" she asked. She received no answer. Fine. She thought hard, remembering every fact the Doctor had ever told her about his people. It was a depressingly short list. But, she knew that time had played a big part in their society, maybe it also had in their language? The Doctor was constantly going on about his 'time sense', maybe there was some feature of the word in the language that they could 'hear' with that in the same way she could hear sounds?

"Can you play a recording of it?" she asked. The screen flashed once and then two syllables played. The first was high and fell off sharply into the second which sounded almost like a low whistle. Okay, she could do this. She tried to copy the sounds. The screen flashed bright red.

"Oi," she muttered, "No need to be rude." The TARDIS did not respond. She tried to say the word again. Red.

"Can you play just the first bit?" she asked. Maybe that would be easier. The TARDIS complied. She repeated it. The screen flashed red again, but it was less bright this time. She grinned.

* * *

Before falling asleep the Doctor made a quick detour by the medbay to run a scan on himself. He had to stop himself from a full on panic attack at the results, relying on the deep well of calm the TARDIS was projecting. The neural implosion he'd experienced after being woken prematurely appeared to have ricocheted through his mind, leaving behind a wide swath of destruction. It was odd. The scans told him there was severe damage, perhaps bad enough to lead to cell death, but he felt completely fine. He hoped the dissonance was a sign that his brain was already beginning to heal itself. He could still feel tendrils of regeneration energy flitting about. It was long after the typical fifteen hour window, but the damage had occurred within the correct time frame so perhaps it was just healing more slowly than normal?

Knowing there was nothing he could do to help the process along, he left the medbay behind and made his way to his room. The TARDIS, more worried than the soothing song she was projecting into his mind would let on, moved it so he only had to walk a short distance before he was falling into his sheets.

His dreams were filled with golden light, brighter than the yellow-orange of regeneration energy. The light of the TARDIS, he realized, she was comforting him even as he slept.

The Doctor awoke from his post-regeneration sleep feeling decidedly off. It was a combination of the extreme sort of exhaustion that always weighed on him after changing everything about himself and a sort of mental weariness that came from not knowing what the day before him held. Strangely, where before he would have taken that sort of uncertainty as a reason to start the day in a foul mood, now it was almost exciting. Was he an optimist in this body? Oh, that was going to take some getting used to.

Maybe the damage from the neural implosion had healed itself and he would be able to speak with Rose again? He hoped that was the case. English was not a terrifically pleasant language to listen to when you couldn't understand a blessed word of it. In an effort to stay positive, he opened his mouth to say the name of the planet English was spoken on. What issued from his mouth was the Gallifreyan name for the little world. He groaned. The neural implosion was apparently still an issue.

Oh well, he'd better go see if Rose was up yet. They might not be able to talk, but he wanted to make sure she wasn't regretting leaving her home behind (once again) to follow a madman in a blue box into the sky. Honestly, he wasn't even sure how they'd ended up here except that after being teleported off the Sycorax ship Rose had hugged her mom and Ricky and shoved him into the box before pointing at the controls and into the air.

"Roose!" he called as he entered the control room, "Roooose!" It wasn't really her name, but the Gallifreyan word was lovely and he rather liked the way it felt on this new tongue. "Roose!" He drew the vowel out, relishing in the way it sounded.

"Good morning?" He whirled. That was... That was Gallifreyan. Rose sat, curled into a little ball on the jump seat, her hair pulled into a messy bun and dark circles under her eyes.

"Rose!" he cried, "You spoke Gallifreyan! When did you learn to do that? How did you learn to do that? Is the TARDIS working again only in reverse? Why would she do that? I'm the one who normally-"

Rose was shaking her head. She looked very, very lost and it slowly dawned on him that she still couldn't understand a word.

"Good morning," she said again. This time he paid attention to the words. They weren't perfect by any means, slowly dripping from her mouth as if reluctant to leave. But they were words and he could understand them.

"Good morning," he said back. She beamed.

"How did you learn that?" he pointed to his mouth and raised his eyebrows as he spoke, hoping to convey the meaning.

She unfolded herself from the jumpseat and held up the monitor that normal sat in the housing above the console. He peered at it.

"Oh!" He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. "Rose you clever girl!" On the monitor was the word 'good morning'. Rose reached out and tapped the screen. The TARDIS played a recording of the word and Rose parroted it back. Her pronunciation was better this time. He tightened his arm around her shoulders.

"How long did that take you to learn?" he asked. She stared. Right. Oh this was going to be so annoying. He pointed at her and then mimed sleeping. She shook her head and pointed at the screen. Right. All night then. It made sense. As one might expect, Gallifreyan was a language not only of physical space, but also of time. The words shifted in response to their environment; the way one said 'good morning' was very different depending on where in the universe one was located both physically and in the timeline. So, as they drifted through the vortex, the greeting Rose had been trying to learn would have been slowly changing to reflect their changing position. The real question was, how had she gotten it right? No human should be able to figure out the shifting patterns of time based suprasegmental features that accompanied each syllable of the language.

"Good morning," he purposely pronounced the world exactly as she had the first time. It had been correct then, but it was not now. The second syllable needed to be lower in pitch. Rose frowned.

"Good morning," she said. The second syllable was perfect.

"Ha!" He cackled and pulled her into a spinning hug. It was going to take effort, a lot of it in fact, but they would be able to talk again.

He took her hand and started down the hallway. The library on the TARDIS was nowhere close to the Archives back on Gallifrey, but there was a small collection of language books. None on Gallifreyan of course, but they could use one of the more pedagogical texts to devise a course for Rose to follow.

Rose Tyler was going to learn to speak Gallifreyan. It shouldn't make him as proud as it did, but it just felt like more proof that she was here to stay. She really wanted to make this work, no matter how strange a situation they found themselves in. Unbidden, the idea that she might want to make more than just their conversations work drifted through his mind. Before, he would have banished the thought. He didn't deserve that sort of happiness, but now. Huh, he really was an optimist because now the only protest he could come up with was that anything like that needed to wait until they could have a real conversation again.

Rose looked up at him from his side. She was exhausted, physically and mentally, but her excitement sparked the air between them, tingling along the edges of his mind. Her hand was hot in his and he did not resist the urge to grip it tighter.

Oh, this was going to be so fun.


	2. The Syntax of Signs

A/N: Just a short one to explore some of the Doctor's thoughts. :)

**Chapter 2: The Syntax of Signs**

Their impromptu language lesson lasted all of a quarter hour before the Doctor realized just how selfish he was being. Not only had Rose stayed up all night, but they had just come off two of the most stressful days he could remember experiencing in many many years. The Game Station's machinations followed by a Dalek attack and the bone-deep exhaustion that came with facing certain death. He stopped searching through the library's stack and turned to stare at Rose. She had curled up in her favorite chair, the one by the fire that was technically big enough for two. She'd become the Bad Wolf less than 36 hours ago. He swallowed. She'd ripped open the TARDIS and stared into a death more certain than even the Daleks and she'd done it for him.

And, oh Rassilon, he'd rewarded her by dying in front of her and then sleeping through most of the invasion of her planet. To say nothing of their current issues with communication.

She'd skipped Christmas dinner with her mum because of him. She acted like it wasn't a big deal, but thinking back he remembered he saw how tightly she'd hugged Jackie while he waited a few feet away. He'd been so busy worrying about what was happening to his brain that he hadn't even noticed at the time. Great. Another reason for Jackie to hit him.

Even as he watched, Rose's eyes fluttered shut. Her head started to tilt towards her chest before she started violently and sat back up. His hearts hurt.

He really was rude.

"Rose," he said and then winced when it didn't come out right. She looked at him and said something. One word that tilted up at the end, a question of some sort. He shrugged a little helplessly and she laughed. Then, she patted the narrow space beside her on the chair.

The first time he realized the chair was big enough for two was also the first day he realized he was in deep trouble. Jack had been traveling with them for a few weeks and the humans were tactile in a way that both fascinated him and elicited scorn from the little voice in the back of his head that he thought of as the Time Lord (capital letters required). Jack ruffled Rose's hair when he passed her and dodged as she slapped out at him. Rose wrapped her arms around Jack's stomach from behind and buried her face in the back of her jacket. They sat in one chair, her legs over his and his arms around her and their cheeks brushing as they whispered. His previous incarnation had not understood the anger that roiled through him when he saw them together. Now, with Rose burned into his hearts as the first being he saw, he understood and he hated it.

He had no right to be jealous of Jack and Rose, especially now that Jack was- well, now that Jack was what he was.

Rose sat up a little higher. She was flushed and he realized she was embarrassed. She was probably missing her friend and afraid of what was happening and she asked him to sit with her and here he was just staring at her. Without another moment's hesitation, he crossed the space between the shelves and the chair in three huge strides. New legs, they were about an inch longer than his last ones. It left him feeling ever so slightly off kilter when each step took him ever-so-slightly further than before. Rose looked up at him with wide eyes, clearly startled by his rapid movement.

"May I?" he asked, pointing at the space beside her. She bit her lip. Good job, Doctor, he thought, you ruined it. Here she was, reaching out and- Oh, he'd missed her saying something. She was looking at him patiently. So, he sat. He really hoped that was what he was supposed to do, because this was going to be so awkward if she'd just rescinded the offer.

Rose wriggled a little and he prepared to bolt, sure he'd messed up in some way. But, she was just shifting so her feet were jammed under the plush arm of the chair. The position meant her back rested against his arm, squishing it in uncomfortably. He pulled it out from under her and immediately realized his mistake. With her leaning back against him like she was he had no where to put his arm. The back of the chair was too high and the only other option was to lay it across her torso. Awkwardly, he allowed it to hover in the air, trying to decide what to do.

Rose snorted. She reached up and grabbed the arm, pulling it down so it was wrapped around her rib cage. He froze.

This was, this was a lot. He'd been jealous of Rose and Jack's casual intimacy. Beyond any feelings he might be harboring, it had been years (so so many years) since he had anyone he was close enough to be that way around. For someone with tactile telepathy it was a sustained form of slow torture. No one felt quite real when you couldn't touch them. He made up for it by taking their hands to run and clapping people on the back and standing just a little too close when he could get away with it.

But, this, this was so different than that.

Rose's back was pressed against his ribs, he could feel her single heart beating. It was slowing even as the breaths that he could feel under his arm deepened. She twisted her head so her face was pressed against the inside of his bicep and he realized what was happening.

She was falling asleep.

Holding him. She'd asked him to come over and then she wrapped him up and now she was- he brushed his mind across the very outer edges of hers- solidly, deeply asleep.

He wasn't sure whether he should be pleased that she was so comfortable with his new body or annoyed that she'd somehow tricked him into being trapped here for however long her exhausted human body planned to sleep.

He settled on feeling wildly, irrepressibly fond.

Besides, he thought, it wasn't as if she'd left him with nothing to do. She was here and he could pass hours mapping the planes of her face, tracing the tiny constellations between the nearly invisible freckles that dotted her cheeks. He leaned his head onto the back of the chair and kicked his legs up onto a conveniently placed footstool. Might as well get comfortable.

Less than an Earth-hour later, the TARDIS slowly turned off the fireplace, lowering the lights in the library so as not to disturb the two sleeping figures curled up in the plush armchair.


	3. Pluralism

A/N: A wild plot appears!

Ok, so depicting characters learning a language is, uh, hard when the readers don't know the language you're depicting. So, a few conventions here;  
\- Rose POV: assume all speech from the Doctor is in Gallifreyan and if it's in English that means they're words that Rose has learned. Rose uses both Gallifreyan and English, so I'll indicate which language she's using when needed.  
\- the Doctor POV: all speech that's written is in Gallifreyan

Oh! And to clarify what's happening with the Doctor; it's not that he's always been speaking Gallifreyan and the TARDIS translated before. From what I could find in interviews, he's supposedly speaks 'all' the languages and is the conduit through which the TARDIS translates for everyone else. Since, that's not physically possible, I tried to build in a reason for him to have learned a bunch of them at the Academy and the TARDIS helps out with the others. So, right now he's having trouble accessing the languages he learned and the TARDIS can't translate because the issue is with him. If any of that has been negated in more recent seasons (I'm behind lol) then we'll call this an AU :)

**Chapter 3: Pluralism**

The next few days passed in a blur. Rose knew the Doctor was trying to restrain himself but each time he passed her it seemed he was carrying a new textbook for her to read. He did not seem to realize that humans actually had to read each and every word on the page. Luckily, there weren't too many texts that mentioned Gallifreyan written in English (exactly three actually, the other books were all linguistics texts he pointed to very insistently and she skimmed before decided they were functionally useless in actually learning a language). They spent the vast majority of their time curled up in the library with a tablet and more than a healthy amount of coffee. Because the Doctor couldn't find any English words, it was up to Rose to determine the path of their lessons. She would think the intent of the phrase or word she wanted to learn at the TARDIS, who produced it on the screen and then the Doctor would burst into a rambling lecture about the word before remembering it was useless and restraining himself to showing her how to pronounce it and place it in simple sentences.

"Tree?" She said to enthusiastic nods.

"Yes! Tree!" Then, he pointed to a single page of the book in his hands and said the first half of the word that meant 'tree' followed by a staccato syllable.

She took the page between her fingers and repeated the word. Then, when he indicated she had pronounced it correctly, she gathered up three pages and added one of the plural prefixes she'd learned. He beamed.

"Yes! Good."

She was ridiculously proud of herself for getting that right. It was honestly a tad embarrassing. They'd spent the entire second day on plurals. After a deeply frustrating few hours trying and failing to understand why she was right sometimes and wrong others when nothing seemed different, the Doctor had run off and returned with a set of wooden blocks. He then arranged them into groups of one, two, three, and four.

"Hueq," he said pointing to the single block. She repeated the word. Two syllables, the first started low and rose and the second held steady. There was a strange whistling quality to it she couldn't identify but could copy if she didn't think too hard about it.

He nodded. "Aqhueqi," he said pointing to the pair of blocks. She frowned and said the word slowly. She'd realized that the words never stayed the same for long, but it hurt her head to think about so she tried to ignore it. But, she wasn't sure if the changes now were meant to indicate that there were two blocks or that the blocks were in a different space or that time had passed. The Doctor seemed to realize her confusion because he quickly pointed to the group of three and said, "Eqhueqi."

She said it, and then pointed at the single block and asked, "Hueqi?"

He nodded. Right, so the shift at the end of the word was because they'd crossed over some invisible barrier in space-time that he could sense and she could not. It was distinctly unfair, she thought, that not only was his language more akin to music than words, but it also seemed determined to thwart any and all non-Time Lord attempts to learn it.

The Doctor reached out and gripped her hand tightly. He face was a picture of gratitude and pride. She smiled at him. It was easy to forget how scared he must be when faced with the complexities of his language.

"Sorry," she muttered, "I was always terrible at languages in school." Then she sighed, "And you can't understand what I'm saying at all, huh?" She laughed a little when he shrugged and gestured expansively with his free hand. "Right," she said, "Blocks. Or. I mean, eqhueqi."

He squeezed her hand again.

Rose took a fortifying breath and pointed to the single block, "Hueqi." To the pair, "Aqhueqi." To the trio, "Eqhueqi." Then the quartet. He hadn't told her the name of the group, but the encouraging look on his face said she knew it. "Eqhueqi?" she tried. He shook his head and she frowned. So _eq- _didn't mean three or more... "Aqhueqi?" He nodded.

"But why?" she asked. Why would- oh! She held up two fingers, then four fingers, then after freeing her hand from his, six fingers and then said, "Eq?"

"Je!" She almost rolled her eyes. Of course he would answer with a word she didn't know. But. he'd been nodding as he said it, so she decided that mean 'yes'.

To test her theory, she held up three, then five, then seven fingers and said, "Aq?"

"Je," he said again.

So, it was an even-odd choice. But, how did that work for when you didn't have time to count? Or when the numbers were too big to count? She picked up the bag of blocks and dumped them onto the table, then before there was time for the doctor to count them, she asked, "Hueqi?" She wanted to say 'how many' but had no idea how to get at those words.

"Qhueqe," he said. He picked up one block, "Hueqe," and gestured to the large group, "Qhueqe." They'd crossed over some other invisible line, but she didn't mind because she understood. Items came in ones, evens, odds, and groups. She could handle that.

On the third day, when she applied that knowledge to the pages of a book she felt a thrill of pride like none she'd known before.

The thing was, Rose had not enjoyed school. Her mom was always working and didn't have the time to help Rose with her homework and so, even as a very small girl, she felt like she was always behind. She knew she was smart, but it seemed like everyone else was smarter. They all seemed to get what the teacher was saying without needing extra help. Rose hadn't wanted special treatment, really all she wanted was a few minutes to puzzle things out herself before being asked to give an answer. She was good at school stuff when she had those minutes. But, none of her teachers ever gave her that, they always wanted answers _right now, Miss Tyler. _Unable to understand why she was different than her friend and embarrassed that it all came so easily to them, she grew frustrated and eventually retreated from the more academic side of school. She didn't need any extra time to learn gymnastics or a proper slide tackle in footie.

Learning with the Doctor didn't feel like school had. He was quieter and more patient than she'd ever thought he could be, gently encouraging without seeming bored or frustrated with her mistakes. To her surprise, she found she was enjoying their lessons. Idly, she wished he'd been around when she was in school. Maybe she'd have gotten her A-Levels and done something more than worked as a shop girl. Maybe she'd have gone to uni and maybe she'd be able to actually help him out on their adventures as more than just his tag-along. Of course, she told herself, if she wasn't a shop girl, she wouldn't have met him in the first place. The thought didn't stop the thin trickle of _wanting _at the idea actually making something of herself, but it helped.

She shook herself from her thoughts and set the book back on the table. Then, in careful Gallifreyan, she said, "Food? I be empty." Something wasn't quite right there, she thought. The Doctor's laugh confirmed it. He stood from his spot on the chair beside her, and took her hand.

"I _am_ empty," he said as he levered her to her feet. Oh, right, the word changed when it was in a sentence. They started towards the galley. As they walked, the Doctor pointed to his stomach. "Empty," he said, "Word is _jjelik_." The word trilled from him like a fragment of birdsong. He cupped his hands around air and said, "Word is empty."

"I am... jjelik?" she asked.

He said something else, a rapid fire sentence she didn't know any words in, but before she could try and pick it apart, they had arrived at the console room. Currently, the library was located close to the bedrooms. The galley, medbay, and swimming pool were on the opposite spoke, through the console room.

The Doctor peeled away from her to check the monitor. He tapped the screen and then frowned.

"Doctor?" she asked. He didn't respond. She'd noticed he seemed less responsive to his name now. She wondered if that was because it was an English word. She hoped it was just that he was distracted, losing one's name (title?) seemed cruel. Her stomach rumbled.

"Come on, Doctor," she said, not bothering to try for Gallifreyan. He would get what she meant by her tone.

The Doctor tapped at the screen again. Then, he exploded into motion as the TARDIS lurched. He grasped at the levels and knobs, desperately flicking and spinning and trying to keep his feet. Rose, who'd been standing in the middle of the walkway, was thrown into one of the railings. She shouted, more in surprise than pain.

"Doctor!" she yelled, "What's happening?"

He was yelling too and now his words sounds less like music and more like grinding machinery, like metal against metal and breaking glass. She wanted to cover her ears against them. Words weren't meant to be like that, they weren't meant to hurt.

The TARDIS lurched again and suddenly Rose was in the air. She had a brief moment to see the Doctor's feet float up from the deck before gravity reasserted itself and they slammed back to the ground. This time she did yell in pain as she caught her arm under her torso, twisting the elbow far past where it was meant to be. She could just see the dark tuft of the Doctor's hair peeking back up over the console before the lights flickered out.

"Doctor?" she said into the silence that pressed down around them.

The word she thought was probably her name floated through the space between them. It sounded thin and tired.

She twisted her body, trying to shift to a more comfortable position without hitting her throbbing arm. She groaned when her side stretched. She'd landed hard and her entire right side was protesting violently.

Cool hands appeared on her shoulders and she started.

"Kuoliros," the Doctor whispered. She hoped that word was her name, it was her favorite one he'd used so far and he'd only shrugged when she asked for a translation. "Feghi uj xbuis?" She shook her head. She couldn't see anything in the pitch black, but he was close so she hoped he could see her.

"Doctor, I can't understand," she said. Then, remembering the word he'd been using to praise her when she got a word right in practice, switched to Gallifreyan, "I am good." it wasn't true, she hurt all over. But, she could feel him trembling and her aches could wait until they knew what was happening. She raised her left hand to where his gripped her shoulder.

"Not I good?" she asked. She didn't know the word for 'you' but she hoped he understood.

"No," he said. Well, that wasn't helpful, she had no idea if he simply didn't understand her question or if he was saying he was injured. Before she could try and ask a different way, the TARDIS doors swung open.

Light pierced the space, illuminating absolute chaos. Smoke filled the room, though she couldn't see flames anywhere, and the console appeared to have fallen to pieces. The Doctor made a strangled noise. She understood. This was a nightmare brought to life. What had happened? She turned back to him to ask but the words fled when she realized he wasn't actually looking at the TARDIS. Instead, he was gazing at her arm. Rose swallowed and looked.

Oh.

She was no doctor, but she was pretty sure arms weren't meant to bend that way. Dimly, she was grateful it did not hurt as badly as she thought it probably should. She pat the Doctor's wrist with her good hand, a clumsy attempt to soothe the twisted expression from his face.

The TARDIS made a complicated sound and the Doctor was on his feet. When had that happened? Rose blinked. She felt very fuzzy all of a sudden, like her brain was floating free of her body. She hoped it didn't crash back down like they had. The thought made her giggle a little.

Her brain would probably bounce if it fell like she had.

There were hands on her, sliding across her back and under her knees and then she was floating up to catch her brain. It drifted further away and she protested. She didn't want it to go.

"Doctor," she whined, "Make it come back."

He said something she couldn't understand and she was afraid.

"Doctor why can't you talk?" she asked, "If your brain going away too?" Hers went a little farther and now even the light coming in from the TARDIS doors (closer than before, closer, closer) seemed dim.

"Doctor?"

A pretty little sentence in a voice she'd only just met but was coming to love. Not Northern, not like before, but still hers.

All hers.

All-

Fingers tightened around her and she drifted away.


	4. Context Dependent Variance

Note: A reminder, if the Doctor is talking it is always in Gallifreyan (if it's from Rose's POV and his speech is understandable, that means those are words she has learned). As in the previous chapter, Rose speaks in both English and Gallifreyan, but it should be clear which language she is using at any given moment. Gallifreyan words are presented in the language itself only when they are being learned or demonstrated.

**Chapter 4: Context Dependent Variance**

The Doctor was very rarely overwhelmed. He prided himself on how much it took to really rattle him. He'd faced down hordes of mindless drones with a smile, fought his way through Gigrelian Marmots in a feeding frenzy and only lost his tie, and he'd walked away from more disasters than any one person probably should. He was the definition of unflappable.

And yet.

Ever since taking her hand in that basement in London, he'd found himself regularly surprised, shocked, and unsure around Rose Tyler. It was a singularly discomfiting feeling, not knowing what he should do or say. It was worse now, with this new gob and the constant, pressing desire to talk and talk and talk. He hoped it was a charming trait, the ability to ramble about anything that might drift through his mind. But, there was no way of knowing right now when Rose couldn't understand a word he was saying. So, he bit his tongue and kept as quiet as he could, not wanting to overwhelm her or cause her to regret her decision to rejoin him in the TARDIS.

She shifted in his arms and he sighed. Or, at least he didn't want to cause more regret than this little incident was already going to. He carefully picked his way across the space between where Rose had landed and the door of the TARDIS. The ship was practically shouting at him to _get out, you fluffy twig! _Despite the dire situation, he did not try to stop the smile her command elicited. No matter the smoke steadily thickening in the air, she did not sound terribly panicked. He figured she wanted them gone so she could enter a repair cycle without worrying about them either suffocating or being unceremoniously mulched when she shifted things around. It was standard practice when she was this badly damaged, though he would have preferred to have access to the medbay for Rose.

Just as he reached the doors, the TARDIS console rang a bell. He looked back and saw a small dark green, canvas backpack. The styling was distinctly military and he frowned. Jack. Probably. The American wasn't the only soldier he'd ever had aboard, but he was the most recent. His items would be easier for a hurting TARDIS to call forth. The thought of the former companion sent an unexpected shock of sadness through him. They might have started off on the wrong foot, but by the time the Game Station rolled around, the Doctor had genuinely liked the other man. He did not think he was wrong to have left him, but maybe one day he could pop around for a visit? Find out exactly why he caused such chaos to the timelines around him. Maybe.

He leaned over, freeing one hand from supporting Rose long enough to scoop the strap of the bag onto his elbow.

"Anything else?" he asked the TARDIS. She groaned and wheezed and he got the impression that she was holding herself very, very still for them. She couldn't feel pain, not in a Time Lord or Human sense, but every sensation that raked across his mind from her sang of discomfort.

"Right," he said, "We'll just be going. Onto the planet. Without any translation. And an injured human. And-" The TARDIS wheezed louder. "Sorry!" He stepped through the open doors and into the light.

As soon as he crossed the threshold the doors slammed shut, nearly catching his heel. He twisted his head to look at the ship, but his annoyance faded away as quickly as it had come when he saw that the light atop the TARDIS was powered down. He swallowed and felt for her in his mind; she was there, but the buoyant crackle he associated with her presence was severely lessened. He forced back his anxiety. She would be fine. She would have told him if whatever had damaged her caused a fatal injury. The thought didn't really help.

"Okay Rose," he said. There was no reason to stop himself from talking now, he supposed. She was already unconscious, how much more overwhelmed could she get? "The air's breathable, though I guess you already knew that since you're breathing." He paused to check that, suddenly afraid he'd missed something. Gentle puffs of air escaped her slightly parted lips. Yay, he thought, breathing is good! "So, breathable air, and it looks like we're in the... ah. Middle of a forest." Now he did turn fully on his heel, careful not to over balance Rose, and glared at the TARDIS. "You couldn't have dropped us off somewhere closer to a city?"

No response.

He groaned. It looked like it was close to midday, so there was at least plenty of time to find a suitable spot to wait out the night. He wanted to get Rose someplace at least marginally comfortable to inspect her broken arm and hopefully get it splinted. It would be good if he could manage it before she woke up so she didn't have to feel it, especially if the break needed to be set.

The clearing the TARDIS landed in was relatively small, bordered on two sides by huge coniferous trees. Directly in front of them was a sheer cliff-face. He tilted his head back to look up, the top was at least one hundred meters up. Unless Jack had squirreled away some pretty intense climbing gear, there was no way they were making it up that. The final side of the clearing fell off sharply. It was surrounded by large bounders and torn up dirt. He winced. Hopefully whatever seismic activity had caused that was not a regular occurence.

"Right," he said, "Let's get that arm looked at." He crossed the clearing towards the closest stand of trees. They looked similar enough to Earth trees that he wasn't terribly concerned about Rose touching them, so when he reached them he bent over and gently leaned her against the trunk. He wrapped his fingers around the wrist of her unbroken arm and counted heart beats.

After a few seconds he gently set the wrist down. He reached up and lay one hand across her brow, sweaty and cool to the touch. He'd known it of course, but it was still discouraging to have hard evidence. He took a moment to sweep back the sweaty fringe of hair from her forehead before delving into the backpack for supplies.

"Let's see just what Captain Jack had hidden away, shall we?" he asked the air. A thought occurred to him. "Oh, please let this be a work backpack. No supplies for, ah, dancing."

* * *

Rose awoke with a start. She jerked up to something that approximated a seated position before a sharp jolt of pain washed over her. She groaned. Suddenly, there were hands on her shoulders.

"Ah!" She tried to move backwards but hit something solid behind herself. The impact caused another of wave of agony, this time centered on her right arm. The hands vanished and she opened her eyes. The Doctor crouched before her, his hands held up in a placating gesture and a worried look twisting his new face.

"Kuoliros!" he said. He gestured wildly around her and then towards her arm, speaking rapidly the entire time. As he spoke he reached into a bag at his side and withdrew a small fabric patch that he placed on the exposed shoulder of her right arm. Immediately the pain diminished to a dull ache.

"Doctor! That's too fast!" She said, "I can't understand anything you're saying." She tilted her head back and hit it against the tree, "And that's useless for me to say. Thank you for the patch though."

He'd stopped talking now. He rubbed one hand across the back of his neck in a clearly embarrassed gesture.

"Yeah, I forgot for a second too," she said. "Uh, wait. What was the word? Ah, jerlim, uh, aqaj?" She was trying to ask where they were. She was confident that _jerlim _meant 'where', but he hadn't taught her the word for 'we'. The closest she could get was using the plural for two and the word for 'I' and hope he understood.

He beamed at her and tilted forward to press a rapid kiss against her forehead. She was pretty proud of herself for not leaning into the touch, despite how much she wanted to.

"We," he used the same word she had, "On planet. Uh, not Earth!" She rolled her eyes and pointed with her good hand at the bright purple grass beneath them. He laughed. "Yes. not Earth. You nufekuj wedsauj." As he said the last two words he picked up a stick and snapped it in half and then pointed to her arm. "Nufekuj," he repeated and broke another twig.

"Wedsauj?" She pointed to her arm with her other hand. He shook his head.

"Wedsauj," he pointed at her arm. "Wedsaaj." He pointed to his own.

"Oh you're kidding me!" She groaned. "They change depending on who's talking too?" He shrugged helplessly. "I know you can't understand, I just want to complain, Doctor."

She took a breath and steadied herself. "Okay, so," she switched to Gallifreyan, "I broke my arm?"

"Yes," the Doctor said, "Okay now." He gently took the arm and showed her the hard-sided splint he'd placed on it. "No run, no hit." It looked like it was physically paining him to use such simple sentences, but Rose appreciated the effort to ensure she could understand.

"Why planet?" she asked.

He shrugged, the casual gesture belied by the tension that appeared in his shoulders and eyes.

"TARDIS hit?" he was clearly guessing. "I need to-" He held up his sonic and gestured around them.

"Go," Rose told him. "I am okay." She really was. Her arm barely hurt at all now and though she still felt a tad shakey, she wasn't about to pass out again. Lord, that was embarrassing. She'd swooned like the star of one of her mom's soaps.

The Doctor did not hesitate once given permission. He bounded to his feet and out away from her into the clearing she could just see through the trees. The sonic was already buzzing away as he swept it in a wide arc before him. Rose watched him with a fond smile. She might not understand the words he was muttering to himself, but she knew she probably wouldn't have understood even if he was speaking English. There was something comforting in that, to know that she'd be in the same situation even if things were normal.

She leaned further back against the tree. She might not hurt anymore, but she was still exhausted. Who knew being unconscious took it out of you like this? She allowed her eyes to drift halfway closed, watching the Doctor with her mind wandering.

He had just started back towards her when she heard the noise. Twigs breaking, a shuffling sound, like heavy stones across concrete, and low puffs of air.

"Uh, Doctor!" She called quietly. "You should get back here!" It wasn't Gallifreyan, but she knew she sounded scared and he'd never not responded when she was scared. His eyes met hers and he began to jog.

"Kuoliros!" he called.

But, it was too late, the ground around Rose had opened and for the second time that day she was falling.


	5. Niner Niner

**Chapter 5: Niner Niner**

A/N: Haha, this is morphing into practice at writing an episode style story. Thank you for all the comments! I'm so happy y'all are enjoying it!

Falling did not happen to be one of Rose's favorite activities. In fact, on the rare occasions since joining the Doctor that she suffered nightmares they tended to involve falling off something or into something or on one memorable occasion, through something. They always left her shaking and jumpy until the Doctor distracted her with a strange new dish for breakfast or by pulling her from the TARDIS and into a new adventure. Just now, as the wind rushed past her face, yanking her hair from the messy bun it had been constrained in and whipping it about. She groped desperately around herself for walls or handholds or _ anything. _She didn't even care if she had to grab it with her broken arm, it would hurt, but she had fallen so far she was sure hitting the ground would hurt more.

She did not want to leave the Doctor.

And then, with a jerk that should have hurt but did not, Rose stopped falling. She took a brief moment to simply breathe and stare up at the tiny pinprick of light far above. It was so far away, the thought, half-numb with surprise at still being alive to think anything at all. The tiny patch of light vanished and she was in complete darkness.

"Ach, sorry about that!" There was a quiet shuffling sound as someone much larger than herself moved around the space. Their movement sent eddies of air swirling through the room and Rose suddenly realized she was still in the air, suspended by nothing at all.

Frantically, she tried to twist herself into a standing position, groping about for anything solid, anything at all.

Her hand hit the corner of something and she wrapped her fingers around it, gripping so tightly she was sure she heard her knuckles creaking. The sounds of the other person moving had stopped.

"I know it's one of these," they said. Their voice was low and gravelly, like the old lady three doors down from her mum who smoked three packs a day and claimed to have been a lounge singer in her youth.

There was a faint _ click _and light flooded the space.

"Ugh!" Rose cried, squinting as her eyes protested the sudden change.

"Well, hello there," the other person said. Rose blinked, trying to force her eyes to focus. "You are a tiny one aren't you?"

Her vision finally cleared and she reeled back. The smooth, hard thing she had been holding for stability was in fact the very edge of a large tusk protruding from the mouth of what appeared to be a sort of iguana-warthog cross. They were wearing a dusty pair of overalls and what Rose thought was probably supposed to be a reassuring grin. There were far too many teeth for the intended effect however.

She let go of the tusk.

"I'm sorry about the little drop there," the lizard-person said. "But, we couldn't leave you up there, the scans were about to start and we all know what that means." They chuckled, a wet, gurgling sort of noise.

"Er, what?" Rose felt very slow just then. It was surprisingly shocking to hear someone else speaking English after so much time practicing Gallifreyan with the Doctor. "Wait, how can I understand you? What scans?" Belatedly she realized she was still floating, "And can I get down now please?"

There was that awful laugh again. Rose tried very hard not to wince. It ignited an ancient desire to flee.

"Slow down, little one," they said. "All in due time. First, I am Belinda-9. The gravity-net needs another minute or so to cool down before it will let you go, so you'll have to float for a bit longer. Is it hurting you?"

Rose shook her head. It was an odd feeling, floating without anything at all touching her, but not an uncomfortable one.

"Good!" Belinda-9's mouth curved into an even larger smile than the one she wore previously. "You never can be sure with mammals, you're all very sensitive you know."

It was so close to something the Doctor might say about humans that Rose found herself smiling as well. There was something comforting in the fact that every around the vast Universe species were always going to think other species were just a tad odd. Like they could all be united in their bemusement of each other's evolutionary paths. It was easier to feel kindly towards Belinda-9 than she normally felt for the Doctor when he made those sorts of statements because it was clearly said in concern and not in a 'oh you silly little unevolved thing you' manner that he sometimes adopted. She had that tone.

"And of course you know about the scan!" Belina-9 said as she began to fiddle with a little computer strapped to her wrist. "Unless, oh are you just in from the City?"

"Ah," Rose said, "Kind of? We didn't plan to land here, our ship just sort of... did?" As she spoke she could feel gravity slowly reasserting itself, lowering her gently to the floor. She heaved a sigh of relief when her feet touched solid dirt once more. "Thank you," she said.

"It's no trouble, dear." She pat Rose on the back with one very large hand. Now that she was on the ground, Rose had to crane her neck back to actually look at Belinda-9's face. "Now, come along. We can't linger here."

"Why not?"

"The scan," she laughed as she began walking from the tiny chamber into a narrow hallway. Her massive shoulders very nearly brushed the walls on either side, though she appeared not to notice. "You really are from the City."

"But, what is the scan?" Rose was hesitant to leave the room. She knew the Doctor would be trying to get to her and she didn't want him to have to search for any longer than necessary. He was a bit of a worrier. The thought made her smile, unable to keep a straight face at even thinking such an understatement.

"Well, no one is quite sure," Belinda-9 explained as she walked away. Rose quickly removed her hoodie and folded it. She lay it in the center of the room, hoping it being so neat and careful would let the Doctor know she was alright. Then, in a flash of inspiration, she scratched a little arrow into the rock wall with another rock as she hurried to follow Belinda-9.

"Sorry, what was that?" Rose asked. She had missed most of the explanation in her delay. Belinda-9 was too large to turn in the narrow corridor, so she could not look back to see what Rose was doing. "I had to stop to tie my shoe," Rose lied. The lizard woman might have saved her life, but she'd also put it in danger in the first place and Rose had been a hostage too many times to reveal all her cards.

"No worries, dear. I was saying that it started a few cycles back. We're not quite sure why or how it works, but if you're topside when it passes over you, ah, well, you cease to be topside, if you understand my meaning."

Rose dearly hoped she was not understanding her meaning.

"So, you're transported down here? Like me?"

They had reached the end of the hall. Belinda-9 took a moment to stretch to her full height, towering nearly twice as tall as Rose. There was an audible series of cracks as she straightened her spine. Then, she peered down at Rose, the smile that she had not lost in their acquaintance small and sad.

"No, little one, you are unwritten from the world itself. No one survives the scan."

Rose's single, very human heart stopped.

The Doctor.


	6. Child Language Acquisition

**Chapter 6: Child Language Acquisition**

The Doctor was getting _very tired _of people trying to separate him and Rose.

He tried to be a gentle man, really, he did. It was often hard. His travels took him to the darkest corners of the Universe. Oh, he wanted to keep to the bright, shining wonders, the places that would bring a smile to Rose's face. The ones she would excitedly tell her mother about, the ones that might make Jackie look at him with something approaching approval. But, the TARDIS always seemed to have a different idea about where they should be going and more often than not they ended up having to run for it.

More often than he was comfortable with, their foes thought they might gain an advantage against him through Rose.

They were always sorely mistaken.

He tried to be a gentle man. He really did. More than that, he tried to be a gentleman, to offer people the chance to solve things peacefully, to talk it out, find some solution that made everyone involved happy, or at least not dead.

But, he had no tolerance for those who would hurt his friends.

For those who would hurt Rose.

There was a storm in his mind, a raging gale that reminded him of the way the winds would rip across the foothills surrounding the Lethe. They tore away at the sparse trees, ripping silver leaves into violent, shining vortexes. Beautiful and dangerous, the winds could desiccate any living being who was unlucky enough to be caught in them. He knew it was wrong to be the way he was, but there was no one left to temper that feeling.

Or.

There _was _no one.

Before last week, before the Game Station and the Daleks and the Bad Wolf, he'd been happy. He had friends by his side who understood him and who did not mind when he needed some time because the wind was raging just a little too violently for polite company. Better than that, it seemed like the storm calmed when he was around them. He would remember the feel of the button beneath his hands, the weight of the entire universe balanced against every single member of his family, every child who would ever be born on Gallifrey. He would start to shake, start to sink into the clouds and the winds and-

Jack would laugh.

Jack was loud and brash and overly forward with both Rose and the Doctor. But, he'd been a soldier of a sort and he had an uncanny ability to know just when to break out his raunchiest jokes. He could incite the Doctor into benign annoyance so fast he hadn't even realized his hands stopped shaking and the winds died away for another day.

He'd left Jack behind.

Alone, newly immortal, and hundreds, thousands of years from home. The thought twirled up through the storm. It hurt to even think of Jack for many reasons, physically, his brain rebelled against a walking, talking fixed point, spiritually, his hearts hurt to think he'd abandoned a friend. Worse than that, there was no solution he could think of. In his haste to get away from the Game Station before he regenerated, he allowed himself a moment of weakness and now there was no way of knowing where and when in the wide universe Jack was.

All he had now was Rose.

Rose who was even better than Jack at noticing when his moods started to sour. She did not tell jokes or prod him into healthier anger. Instead, she linked her arm in his and asked where to find the best apple pie in the universe, where the biggest star was located, why the Felgrinian people were green when they ate only orange food. She asked questions and forced him to think of logical things and by the time he had set the TARDIS to take them to where the answer to her question was located he had forgotten he was angry at all.

It was a precious gift, to be able to forget even for a moment why he was so angry all the time.

And someone had taken that, had taken her away from him.

Again.

It would not be allowed. The Universe needed to know that Rose Tyler was _untouchable _.

He whipped out his sonic screwdriver and began scanning the ground she had been seated upon before she fell.

The readings came back indicating soil and rock and organic matter. No technology at all, at least not within the range of the screwdriver. He spun in a frustrated circle, scanning the area around them.

Nothing.

It was as if the planet had never been inhabited at all, there weren't even the small blips of electrical energy that would indicate small birds or reptiles.

He... He didn't know what to do. If nothing technological registered with the sonic there was nothing he could manipulate to try and find Rose. The TARDIS would never let him back in while she was repairing herself. There was no one around for miles and miles. He was at a complete and total loss.

The impotent fury fizzled itself out, settling into the sort of lassitude that can only come from heightened emotions with no release. He threw himself onto the ground beside the spot Rose had been pulled under and started clicking through each and every setting on the sonic.

He had just clicked past 356a (nothing, not even a shiver of a response) when he heard it.

There was a low buzzing sweeping through the trees. It started off so quiet he couldn't really be sure when he had actually begun hearing it at all, but it was rapidly growing in volume. He leapt to his feet and pulled himself up into the closest tree, trying to get high enough to have a vantage point for what was approaching. Just at the edge of his vision, the trees were shaking. Not just a few, he realized, all of the trees were shaking. It was as if a planet sized wave was crashing and he was on the shore.

Rose had been taken below ground, he thought, there were tunnels for a reason. The buzzing was growing louder as the shaking approached. It did not sound right, not natural at all. He jumped down from the tree and then shouted in surprise and stumbled back. There was a child sitting directly below him.

They looked up at him and smiled a very reptilian smile, all teeth and saliva and bright yellow eyes. He smiled back.

"Hello there," he said, "Who are you?" He looked around, hoping for a parent to appear. "Better question," he continued, "What are you? I've never seen a reptiliform quite like you before." Their skin was covered in the wrong type of scales for a young Ice Warrior (to say nothing of their apparent comfort in the temperate climate of the planet. In fact, the fine scales resembled more of an Earth-type snake than anything else. Their eyes were wrong for a Foamasi, they peered straight forward and did not protrude far enough to indicate any sort of control beyond the standard bipedal species. Nor were they obviously silurian, though that was a harder judgement to make since the silurians comprised multiple subspecies. He circled the child, scanning them with the sonic, but, to his surprise, they did not produce any readings at all.

"Of course!" he shouted, smacking himself on the forehead, "There's something here blocking my scans! You can't have a forest without bugs, oh I am so slow!"

The child scooted away from him as he yelled, tucking themself back against the tree in obvious fear.

"Oh, oh," he said, "No, I'm nice! That wasn't at you!" Then, remembering the situation he had been living with for the last few days he groaned. "And of course! Now I'm scaring a kid and I can't even tell them I'm not a monster."

He cast around for something that might reassure a child. There was nothing around them save for rocks and fallen leaves which were beginning to vibrate and the buzzing sound drew ever closer. It set his teeth on edge, rattling through him and leaving him feeling shaky and afraid.

"Okay," he said as he slowly shifted and reached towards the ground, ensuring the child could see each and every movement he made. "I've got a fun little trick to show you, yeah? Kids everywhere like magic tricks. Well, not everywhere, I did get chased out of this little town in Massachusetts once, but there were extenuating circumstances." He found a good rock, small and brightly colored and missing any jagged edges the child might hurt themselves on.

He held up the rock, waving it back and forth to make sure the kid was watching and then, with a twist of his fingers, tucked it away where they could no longer see it. The child's mouth opened in awe, releasing a little gasp of wonder. The Doctor smiled. He reached out and, borrowing from the street magicians on most planets in the galaxy, made the stone reappear from behind their ear. The child clapped, grabbing at the stone and clearly no longer afraid of him.

It was nice, he thought, that he could still make a child feel safe even without his words. He might not be doing much else right so far this regeneration, but at least he could still do that.

The buzzing ramped up again and now it had begun to hurt. He grimaced against the pressing agony at the back of his head. There was something not right here, beyond Rose being taken and a child in the middle of the woods without any parents around. Something that danced along the edge of his senses, teasing him. He should know it, he thought, he'd felt it before. But, the buzzing drove away all other thoughts.

Suddenly, the child looked up from the colorful rock and around at the woods as if just noticing where they were. They turned to the Doctor and grabbed his hand, pulling him along as they stood and darted towards the cliff-face on the opposite side of the clearing the TARDIS was situated in.

As they passed, he saw the light atop the TARDIS flicker on for a picosecond before going out again. Some of the tension he hadn't even realized he'd been carrying faded away. She was healing and she wanted him to know it would be okay. He pushed a wave of affection her way and enjoyed the bubbling, gleeful sensation of her own in return.

Then, they were at the rock face and the child was looking at him expectantly.

"What am I supposed to do?" he asked. He ran the sonic over it once, rapidly but it was the same as before, no readings. He had just leaned towards the rock, planning to lick it to determine its composition when the shouting broke out. He whirled in place, grabbing the child by their shoulder and shoving them behind him, between him and the rock where they might be just a bit more protected.

From the opposite side of the clearing, there were three more reptiliform individuals racing towards them. They looked panicked with wild gestures and clearly angry shouts, but the Doctor was more interested in the way the trees at the edge of the clearing had begun to vibrate, shaking so violently that their leaves fell off in great clumps. The vibrating continued to increase even as the buzzing ramped up to ear-splitting levels. At his side the child yanked on his hand and said something. Their voice was high-pitched and terrified.

The others had reached the halfway point in the clearing when the buzzing touched them. They immediately froze, shrieking out in agony. As he stood, paralyzed by what he was witnessing the pain in the back of his head coalesced into a sharp stab and he realized what he was seeing.

The trees began to come apart at the seams, their very molecules peeling away from each other into spiraling plumes of matter that rose to meet those coming from the trees and now the Doctor could see that the entire forest was being unwritten from the world.

The child was screaming now, pulling on him harder. He wanted to look down, to comfort them, but the vibrating had just reached the TARDIS and he couldn't- He couldn't lose her too.

The TARDIS shook for a moment, rattling against the hard soil, and then settled, clearly having shaken off whatever this was. The sudden release of tension from his muscles was enough for the child's next insistent yank on his hand to send him stumbling backwards. He reached out with his free hand to steady himself against the wall.

Except there was no wall there. He fell to the ground with a grunt of surprise and pain, pulling the child down after him. He could still see the clearing and the decomposed matter of the other people and the trees floating up into the sky. But, the terrible buzzing had ceased.

The child pulled their hand free from his, darting away into the darkness that stretched behind them.

"Wait!" He called, "No don't run off, why do people always run off?" His words echoed against the bare walls and he shuddered.

They were clearly safe in here from whatever that had been, he would have to assume that the same was true for Rose and wherever she had ended up below the ground.

He refused to accept anything less as the truth.

With a sigh, he pulled himself to his feet and clicked the sonic over to light-emitting mode. It lit the chamber with characteristic pale-green light, revealing unnaturally smooth walls and a long hallway that gently sloped downward.

"Down," he said, "I guess that's the way I'm going." He spared one final glance back at the TARDIS. "Be safe, old girl!" he called, "No falling to atoms before I'm back." He forced away the memory of the reptiliforms agonized faces as they died. There was nothing he could do for them, but maybe he could find some answers by finding the child who apparently knew enough to not only survive but save his life as well.

He started down the tunnel.


	7. Targeted Elicitation

A/N: A bit of a shorter one this time, I've been out of the country and had zero time/energy to write. I'm back now though and the next chapter is going to be much longer 3 thank you to everyone who took the time to comment! they mean the world!

****Chapter Text****

**Chapter 7: Targeted Elicitation**

"I don't suppose you know what year it is on Earth?" Rose knew it was a long shot, but she wanted to know even one thing about the situation she found herself in. She had no idea what planet she was on, when she was, where the Doctor was, if he'd even survived the- She jerked her mind away from that line of thinking. She knew the Doctor and if there was anyone who could manage a miraculous escape in next to no time and with even less information it was him. She was determined to assume he was alive and fine (outside the problems they had arrived on this planet with) until proven otherwise.

Belinda-9's hands slowed in their work. She'd been carefully sorting a basket of what appeared to be mealy apples into a few small piles, her giant fingers tentatively gripping their delicate flesh.

"Earth?" She asked.

Rose sighed, that wasn't a great sign. "Yeah," she said, "It's where I'm from. My friend always tells me what year it is in Earth years." It made the wide Universe she found herself traversing feel a little bit closer to home, no matter where or when they were. Funny, she hadn't even realized how much she relied on that to be comfortable until she didn't have it.

Belinda-9 cocked her head to the side, "Why would you not know the year?"

Rose snorted. Right. Time travel was such an integral part of her life these days, she'd forgotten that it wasn't the norm for anyone else. "I, uh," she cast about for a reason why she might not know the year that didn't make her sound like a drunk or a madwoman. She drew a blank. Of course. The one time the Doctor wasn't- She couldn't think of anything. "I have a time machine?" Belinda-9 had saved her life, she tried to reason with herself, surely it was okay to tell her the truth? The Doctor told people all the time. Rose was just more wary, ever since Adam she wasn't sure she trusted herself to pick the right people to tell or trust.

"Hmm," Belinda-9 said. She raised one of the fruits to her face and sniffed delicately. Her scaled features twisted into a frown. "We don't get many time travelers. This one's rotten."

"What?" Rose had hoped for casual, but this strayed a little far past accepting into downright bored.

"The fruit," Belina-9 said, "It's rotten. We were delayed in our harvest and the Others beat us to them. The entire batch is likely contaminated."

"Oh," Rose said. "The others?"

"Yes," Belinda-9's voice was very final. "I do not know the Earth year. We have a basic translation matrix threaded through the electrical system and Earth languages were loaded a few years ago when one of your ships visited. But, we did not trade for any calendars and our computers were lost in the first Scan."

"You said no one knows what the Scan actually is?"

Belinda-9 sighed. Rose liked the sound, it was like the breeze off the ocean scraping over stones worn smooth by eons of waves and wind. The thought occurred to her and she smiled, her mum would roll her eyes and say she'd picked up a whole lotta nonsense traveling with himself. Rose didn't mind though, she'd never taken any A-levels but she'd always liked the poncier books they read in school and thought she probably would have done pretty well on a literature exam.

(She'd read many, many more works of classic literature since joining the Doctor. They were still interesting, but recently she'd found herself getting lost in his voice as he read and missing entire chapters worth of information.)

"That's not completely true," She said, "It's more that we don't know how it works. Or at least, no one who hasn't been destroyed by it knows how it works. Most of our scientists and engineers were too slow."

"I'm sorry," Rose said because it seemed like the thing she should say. Belinda-9 hummed an acknowledgment.

"My Terry-K3 was a structural engineer," she said. "Hard work, that. But, he loved it. Said he never felt more alive than when he was out there, watching people use the bits of infrastructure he designed." She was quiet for a moment, running one claw along the edge of her right tusk, clearly lost in thought, "He was on a job site when the first Scan happened."

"He died?" Rose asked.

She shrugged and turned back to her work. "I assume," she said, "There's no closure with the Scan, you're there and then you're not and all that's left of you is in people's heads."

Rose shuddered. Her fear for the Doctor surged forward and, without thinking she said, "But you do know something about it? You said-"

"It was meant to be a good thing," Belinda-9 broke in, "To help us. We look tough-" She paused and rapped one huge fist against her shoulder with a heavy thunk, "but our bodies have never been very good at fighting off disease. The smallest microorganisms are deadly to even the most fit among us."

Rose took a rapid step back, the TARDIS normally ensured she didn't get sick or make anyone else sick with what the Doctor called her 'genuinely silly amount of bacteria, I mean really Rose, do humans actually need an entire ecosystem in their guts, it's honestly a bit-' She generally cut him off at that point, but the thought lingered. She did not want to hurt Belinda-9 or anyone else, especially after she'd saved her life.

Her broken arm began to ache slightly.

Belinda-9 noticed her sudden fear. "No, no, don't worry," she said, "The entrance shaft has a minor version of the Scan, one of the early models that worked."

"What does it actually do though? How did it make me safe if it kills up top?"

"The Scan is meant to kill any harmful organisms someone might be carrying. Our scientists thought they could eradicate all disease from the planet," she said. She picked up the rotten fruit again and squeezed. It burst, spewing sickly sweet smelling mush onto the table. Rose winced.

"I take it the plan, uh, didn't go right?" Rose asked. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the greyish fruit pulp slowly sliding down the leg of the table.

Belinda-9 picked up another fruit from the main pile and inspected it.

"No," she said, "It recognizes all living organisms as threats. Anything caught in the Scan is reduced to its base molecular structure. But, we have no idea how it works, it shouldn't be possible. No one had technology like that, we're advanced, but we're no Exxilons."

Rose really didn't like the sound of that, even less so when she pictured the Doctor as she'd last seen him; frantic and afraid and determined to find her. He never would have left that spot, not if he thought it was the best place to get to her.

"Look, my friend, he was with me up there before you pulled me down here," she said. "I know you didn't grab him too, but is there any chance someone else did? Like, after we left?"

Belinda-9's face twisted. The expression revealed a great many of her teeth.

"Ach, no," she said slowly, "I'm very sorry. The only ones up there today were the Others and they'd sooner kill him themselves to steal what's in his pockets than help him."

Rose was growing frustrated. The Scan, the Others, it was all vague nonsense when what she wanted was the Doctor and his particular brand of vague nonsense.

"But my friend can help you," she protested, "It's what we do, really. Help people solve these sorts of problems. He's the best."

"He was the best," Belinda-9's voice was not cruel but it was firm and Rose whirled away from her. Her arm really was hurting now. She tucked it against her side, feeling the careful way the brace had been wrapped; tight enough to hold the splint in place but not so tight that her fingers tingled. She hadn't been awake to see him put it on, but she could picture it; his long fingers carefully tying each knot and then smoothing down the fabric with the lightest pressure he could manage. His eyes would have been huge and worried and-

Rose refused to believe he was gone.

She only had a spare week with this new Doctor. She'd spent the first few days blinded by both his linguistic difficulties and all the ways he was different from her Doctor. It was only in the last few days, as they sat in the library and he patiently repeated words and phrases while she mangled their pronunciations that she'd begun to see all the ways he was the same. He smiled more now than he ever had before, but it was the same expression it had been; huge and warm and so often it was only for her. He seemed more hesitant to touch her now, but when he did, he still felt cool and strong in the way he had.

She absolutely would not accept that he was gone. She just wouldn't.

She refused to believe that she hadn't even understood the last thing he said to her.

"No," she said, "That's not true. Is it safe to go back up there, yet?"

Belinda-9 glanced at a device she wore clipped to her shirt collar.

"Yes, but you won't find anything. Even the trees and grass will be gone," she warned. "There's no closure there, no answers. Just a barren waste."

Rose stood up straighter. Her arm hurt and she channeled her frustration at the pain into determination to succeed.

"I'm good at finding answers where there shouldn't be any," she said firmly. Her mind was filled with golden light, a memory of a memory suffused with determination that He Would Not Die Today. "And I've never left him behind before. I'm not about to start."


	8. The Maxim of Quality

A/N: I am using gender neutral pronouns for all of the people the Doctor encounters until he learns their names, at which point they are referred to using their preferred pronouns (which includes gender neutral for at least one person).

Linguistics note: an exclamation point in the middle of a word indicates a (post)alveolar click (made by pressing the front half of your tongue to the roof of your mouth just behind that little bump behind your top teeth and pulling down rapidly, it should feel like you're making a little vacuum)

**Chapter 8: Maxim of Quality**

"Oh look!" the Doctor crooned, running his hand along the rough hewn wall of the tunnel, "Another rock! This one's gray, just like, well, just like all the others really. Whoever made this place," he raised his voice, "could use some interior design classes!" There was no response save his own words echoing back in a discordant melody of his native tongue. He scowled. He was sure he'd missed a turnoff somewhere, there was no way the child could have outrun him like this. They'd been downright scrawny. Besides, it was dead silent save the sounds he made and surely he would still hear them if they were running ahead. But, when he'd taken a moment to retrace his steps, he hadn't found any hallways or doors or anything that might be large enough for a child to squirrel themselves away inside.

Leaving through the hidden entrance by which he entered was obviously right out, not if he didn't want to be atomized, so he did the only thing he could. He continued forward.

It felt like that was all he was doing sometimes. Pressing forward, ignoring whatever had just happened, even when it was so close he could still smell the ionization of bodies being ripped apart.

Forward.

"Onward and upward," he muttered and then scowled. He knew those were the correct semantics, the right meaning, to keep pushing further and further into the unknown, be it in front of or above oneself. But, he also knew the phrase should have a certain poetry about it that it did not have in Gallifreyan. Perhaps one of the syllables was meant to be the same? Or maybe the words rhymed? He ran his hand through his already disheveled hair in frustration. This feeling wasn't like the ones he'd experienced before when he just had no clue at all about the English translation of what he wished to say. This was the frustrating sensation of having a word hovering on the tip of his tongue, begging to be released into the world and having to refuse because he could not define the shape of it.

"Right," he said, "No more Earth idioms, that's the way." At least not until he could get back to Rose and ask her to translate. Of course, he'd have to teach her the Gallifreyan words for the concept, which might be difficult. How did one explain the sensation of yearning for a higher purpose, a higher destiny for one's people, and actively working to bring that brighter future about... How could he do that when they had only just started to cover 'I'm hungry. Where's the tea?'.

Perhaps he could transition their lessons towards verbs of motion and prepositions? Then he could explain 'forward' and 'moving' and maybe she would understand the idiom he wanted to learn.

He was so caught up in planning their next lesson and ignoring that he wasn't even quite sure _where _his pupil was currently located, that he failed to notice when he stepped through a shimmering barrier into a bustling courtyard. His trainer caught the edge of a rock and he paused, peering down at the unnaturally perfect 90 degree angle.

"Oh, what have we here? Oh, you're lovely, you are," he told the rock, crouching down to scan it quickly with the sonic. It was only a rock; igneous, formed by a series of pyroxene structures. He focused on the psychic information streaming from the sonic, it was most likely (Ca,Na)(Mg,Fe,Al,Ti)(Si,Al) 2 O 6 , which told him exactly nothing because augite was universally common and unremarkable. The dark green was lovely though, you didn't see that often in cobblestones. He sighed, at least it was evidence he had been headed in the right direction, that perhaps he might find a society still-

Someone cleared their throat.

He looked up.

Ah, well. It was possible he'd been distracted, just a tad, because there were no fewer than twenty people arrayed about him. Only three were actually paying him any mind, but it was obvious from the tilts of their heads and the way the larger beings place themselves between him and the smaller that everyone was aware of him.

"Er, hello there," he said, "I'm the Doctor. Has anyone seen a kid or a blonde about? I was following the kid and the blonde arrived with me. They're not together. Or at least I don't think they are. They might be. Rose tends to get herself mixed up in things rather quickly and I've completely forgotten _again _that you can't understand me."

The being closest to him took another step forward as the Doctor stood from his crouched position. They were a good hand and a half taller than he was, even if he rather generously included his hair in his height calculations. They, and all the other beings, sported a rather intimidating pair of tusks that seemed almost out of place on their reptilian faces. He cast about, trying to recall the name of the species.

"Oh!" he smacked himself on the forehead, "You're Gullinets! Oh it is a pleasure to meet you." He reached out and took the closest one's clawed hand, shaking it rapidly up and down. "I've read so much about you, the scan-neutral scales? Brilliant evolutionary tactic making yourself completely invisible to all scans? I love it, you know we, the Time Lords that is, we borrowed just a bit of that for ourselves. Not that anyone would have given you lot the credit for it, but well, I'm rambling again. Sorry about that, this gob is new and I'm still figuring it out." He forced himself to stop talking. It really was a struggle now, like all the words he hadn't said in his previous incarnation had been stopped up and were now trying to escape every time he opened his mouth.

The closest Gullinet said something and the Doctor's thin thread of hope that he would understand snapped.

"Of course," he said, "Sorry. Ah," he pointed to himself and said, very slowly, "Doctor." The Gallifreyan word did not sound quite right, it wasn't his title, wasn't the word he had chosen for himself so many years ago in that library surrounded by the books of earth. But, the meaning was the same.

The Gullinet seemed to understand that they would not be speaking the same language.

"Tycho-6," he said pointing to himself. Then he pat the shoulder of the one on his left, "Marin-0," and finally the one on the right, "Terry-K3." The Doctor nodded to each in turn, taking a moment to memorize the distinctive features that would allow him to tell them apart. Tycho-6 wore a dusty blue jumper, one of the only pieces of clothing he could see with any sort of color to it. Marin-0 was far shorter than the other adults in the space and they had a broken tusk. He turned to Terry-K3 and winced, the Gullinet had clearly been partially caught in whatever weapon was decimating the surface- his entire left side was a ruin of partially healed scar tissue. He wore a prosthetic arm that extended up over the curve of his shoulder and the Doctor would bet his life at least part of his leg was gone as well. The Doctor meet Terry-K3's eyes and amended his plans;

_Step One: find Rose. _

_ Corollary to step one; if whoever took her had harmed her, punish those responsible. _

_ Secondary corollary; Kiss her. _

_Amendment: Step Beta: figure out just what exactly is going on and stop it from ever happening again. _

_Step Three: get back in the TARDIS and leave this horrible place_.

Terry-K3 seemed to read this promise in his gaze and nodded at him. There was a beat of silence before Tycho-6 started to say something only to be interrupted with a small, reptilian projectile launched themself into the Doctor's torso. He grunted and stumbled back, instinctively wrapping his arms around the smaller form.

"Kjel-2!" Tycho-6 snapped. He reached out and grabbed the child's arm pulling them back and away from the Doctor.

"No, no, it's alright!" He recognized the child now as the one who has saved his life. He crouched down onto his heels so his eyes were roughly level with hers. "Doctor," he said.

She beamed at him, revealing tiny points of tusks that were only just beginning to grow in. He smiled back and looked up at Tycho-6.

"She saved me," he said. Then, he pointed at the child and then himself with a big grin, then again at himself and not the child with a frown and a gesture that was meant to convey disappearing. Luckily, it seemed they at least understood he was neither a threat or annoyed by the hug. Kjel-2 looked up at Tycho-6 and said something in a rapid language filled with clicks and trilling consonants. Tycho-6 glanced back at the other children who had started to gather around and then at the Doctor who tried his best to look innocent. Tycho-6 sighed heavily and said a single word.

Kjel-2 released a high pitched whoop of joy and darted across the space between them. She took up his hand and dragged him over to a low table surrounded by what looked to be other children and adolescents.

"Er, hello there!" he said brightly, waving and smiling to try and convey greetings. The kids chattered and laughed at the funny sounds he was making. One of them craned their neck up and whistled back the melody of his words. He laughed at their proud expression and soon all the children were whistling their greetings. The smallest of the children took his hand and tugged, he pretended they were far stronger than they were and toppled to a seated position beside them. The children giggled.

"Right," he said, "Pratfalls are big here, huh?" A few of them whistled back the tones in 'pratfall'.

Kjel-2 went around the table and introduced each of the children in turn. He said their name after each introduction, attempting to force him tongue around the consonants it was unused to producing. Gallifreyan was complicated and contained a great many phonologically unique sounds, including a glottal approximant he knew was impossible for human vocal tracts to produce, but it was sorely lacking in clicks and he'd always struggled with those when not simply allowing the TARDIS to take care of them for him. Sometimes he mangled a name particularly badly and the children laughed at him, other times he got it perfect and the child in question beamed, sitting taller as if he'd bestowed some great honor on them. He made a special effort to spend a bit more time on the harder names so none of them would feel left out.

The one beside him, called P!tel-8 he'd now learned, waited until everyone was introduced before poking him in the side and presenting him with a very small sliver of greyish fruit. He took it with a smile and raising it to his nose breathed in deeply, trying to ensure that it wasn't pears or anything of the sort. Sharp, citrusy and a tad astringent, with not a trace of horrid pear scent. He ate the entire thing in one bite eliciting shocked gasps from the children.

"What?" he asked. He looked around. None of them had taken more than the smallest nibble from their portions. He frowned. Admittedly, he wasn't the most up on his Gullinet physiology, but he was sure they were like most reptiliforms and would eat in a similar way; large bites with no chewing or simply swallowing their food whole. Why would the children he so carefully making their snack last like this?

He looked to the adults. Most had gone back to whatever it was they had been doing before he arrived, but Tycho-6 and Terry-K3 lingered, watching him with wary eyes. No, wait, they weren't watching him. They were eyeing the fruit and they were hungry. Oh, how hadn't he seen it before? Their hunger practically screaming through his mind now that he realized it was there. The single bite of fruit sat heavily in his stomach.

He pointed to the meager pile on the table, perhaps a dozen fist-sized fruits in total, raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to the side. He hoped using no many markers of confusion would convey his meaning. _How long does that need to last? _

Neither adult appeared to understand. He cast about for a way to frame the question, shifting back on his bum. The sonic jabbed at him. Oh! He snatched the sonic up and spun around to face the adults fully. This was going to take a moment and he wanted their full attention.

He held up the sonic and lit the tip, then he pointed at his eyes, making them wide and alert. Then, he extinguished the tip and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. Then, he held up one finger. He repeated the process and added a second finger. Terry-K3 nodded.

The Doctor shook his hand out, metaphorically shaking away the days he'd just demonstrated. He signed 'one day' and then pointed to the fruit and raised his brows again.

Terry-K3's jaw fell open and the Doctor knew he'd succeeded. The Gullinet crossed the space between them and poked at the fruit. He looked back at Tycho-6 who said something in an angry voice and then he gestured to first the children and then the visible adults. As he encompassed the children, he tucked his head so his tusks just barely brushed his chest. Then, as he indicated the adults he turned his head to the side. The Doctor gestured for him to stop.

"I don't know those," he paused and tucked his own head and then turned it to the side, "motions. I don't use those."

Tycho-6 stepped forward. He took up a fruit and handed it to Kjel-2, then another which he happened to Terry-K3. He made the head-tuck gesture and indicated Kjel-2 and then the head-turn gesture and took the fruit from Terry-K3.

The Doctor thought for a moment and then decided that head-tuck was 'yes' and head-turn was 'no'. He indicated they should continue.

Tycho-6 stepped back as Terry-K3 began again. He indicated the children and 'yes' and then the adults and 'no' and then he held up five fingers three times.

The fruit he'd eaten began to make him feel a bit queasy. If he was understanding them, this tiny pile was meant to feed the children for at least the next fifteen days. He wasn't sure if there was some other food source for the adults or if they planned to just not eat. But, that didn't matter because the children would not survive that long on such meager portions. There were eight gathered around this table; less than an either of a fruit and that was it for a day? It wasn't possible.

He amended his plan once more. His first and only priority until the problem was solved was finding a source of food for these children. Rose was resourceful, she could wait a bit longer.

He looked around. There was nothing but grey, bare stone here. Clearly food could not be grown. He needed to return to the surface. The forest had been lush and green, surely something of that had survived whatever it was attacking the planet?

He stood abruptly.

Pointing up at the ceiling, he said, "Tycho-6, Terry-K3, I'm going to solve this. Just you wait. And really, I do mean wait." He started towards the archway he'd entered through, "Don't follow me!"

Behind him, Tycho-6 and Terry-K3 looked at each other and shrugged. They had no idea what the strange mammal had just said, but he seemed determined and they'd fulfilled their obligation to feed the visitor so their obligation was no more.


	9. Convergent Innovation

If y'all are interested in the details of the play version of Gallifreyan I've been using for this fic, I posted a short sketch over on Ao3 (search for the title of the fic and it's the only result haha)

I think there is one more actual chapter and an epilogue left after this.

**Chapter 9: Convergent Innovation**

The trip back up to the surface was much less traumatizing than her entrance to the cave system had been. Rather than a sudden fall and the fear of death, Rose simply stepped onto a raised section of stone and pressed the button on the wall that Belida-9 indicated. The large woman stood towards the back of the platform, she'd initially told Rose she could go up on her own, but after checking the little device clipped to her shirt collar she shook her head and joined Rose on the platform.

"Is the Scan happening again?" Rose asked.

Belinda-9 sighed. "No, not yet. But you won't have long up there and I don't want you to die trying to find your man."

Rose nodded. She appreciated that the other woman had stopped trying to convince her the Doctor was dead. She understood it was coming from a place of her own grief at the loss of her partner, but Rose was positive she would know if the Doctor was dead. And he wasn't. She was sure of it. He was different than he'd been just over a week ago, brighter and more energetic than ever, but still so so clever. She knew with every fiber of her being that he would have found a way to stay safe.

She couldn't allow herself to think any differently.

"Okay," she said as the platform began to raise, "Do you know how long I'll have to look?"

Belinda-9 watched her, studying her features for a long moment before looking back down at the device. "Not long, maybe a half-vef?"

Rose, now used to hearing words she did not understand, sighed and nodded. If this were the Doctor she would have been delighted to take the opportunity to puzzle out exactly what a 'vef' was. But, for all that she liked Belinda-9, she was not the Doctor and Rose did not have the patience right now.

The elevator carried them to the surface in a series of short jerks, surging upward ten or fifteen feet at a time. Rose staggered a few steps with each of the first few, but soon gained her balance and figured out how to brace without being so stiff she toppled. The odd movement was actually a welcome distraction from the worry that seemed to grow with each passing second.

She knew the Doctor was alive. He was. But, there was a little voice in her head that said it had been an awfully long time, why hadn't he found her yet? Surely the sonic would have been able to open the same port she fell into. And, if that was the case, why hadn't he just walked down the hall?

They breached the surface halfway through another jolting ascension. Rose yelped as the bright light stabbed at her eyes. She covered them, trying to squint through her fingers to see without tearing up.

"See," Belinda-9 said. Her voice was low and flat, devoid of all the warmth she'd exuded the entire time Rose had known her.

"One mo'," Rose said. She kneaded at her eyes and finally opened them to see the world. She gasped.

It was all gone. Everything. Belinda-9 had not been exaggerating when she said everything organic was vulnerable to the Scan. Instead of the verdant forest she and the Doctor found when they landed, all Rose could see was a vast expanse of dust stretching between where they stood and where a cliff face jutted up and out.

"I told you," Belinda-9 said, "I'm very sorry for your loss."

Rose shook her head. It wasn't so much that she was denying what Belinda-9 was saying, more that she _couldn't _believe it. Because if it was true then she had lost him and only a week ago she looked into the heart of the TARDIS and she saw all of time. She couldn't remember much from those few minutes, but surely if she'd seen this she would have left herself a message?

Then, as if her thoughts had summoned it, a breeze swept across the newly created plain. It pulled at the top layer of dust, sending it into the air where it stung Rose's bare skin and eyes. While she really hoped the Doctor had not been caught in the Scan, Rose found it didn't matter either way because she was going to be having nightmares about dust made from the remnants of his body for years.

The breeze was clearly across the entire plain; Rose could just barely see dust being whipped into a little cyclone at the edge of the cliff. Despite everything, she smiled thinking of the dust devils she and the Doctor had seen on Mars when he took her there. They hadn't left the TARDIS, just stood in the doorway and peer out at-

The TARDIS.

Rose gasped. The breeze had cleared dust away from the TARDIS, revealing the bright blue ship positioned just in front of the cliff.

"Belinda-9!" Rose laughed, "Look! Oh, of course, I bet he's in there. She was injured, the ship was I mean, but she would have let him in. I'm sure of it."

She reached back with her uninjured arm and grabbed Belinda-9's hand, pulling her forward off the platform. "Come on!" She laughed, "He'll love to meet you."

They crossed the expanse quickly, Rose's hope rising with each and every step. As they moved, they cut a swath through the dust, sending it up in small plumes with each step. Halfway across the plain, Rose had a thought.

"How often does the scan happen?" She asked, glancing back at her companion.

"Often enough," she rumbled. Her gaze was fixed on the ground below them, eyes shining. She clearly wasn't in the mood to talk. Rose nodded and told herself she'd ask again when they were in the TARDIS. It was too important of a thought to be forgotten. Belinda-9 had lost her partner to all this, it made sense she wasn't really comfortable out in the middle of it.

When they reached the TARDIS Rose put her hand on the door and thought a greeting. She wasn't ever sure if the ship could hear her thoughts since she was, according to the Doctor, 'tragically limited in the psychic department'. She'd been mildly offended when her first Doctor said that, a fact he noticed, prompting an immediate apology and twenty minute ramble about psychic abilities and how they interacted with humanoid neurons and a lot of other tosh that Rose really didn't care about but enjoyed hearing because he was smiling (he hadn't smiled enough back then, she thought).

She vaguely remembered there being smoke and chaos before the Doctor carried her out of the TARDIS. So, hoping the ship had had enough time to repair whatever went wrong, she pressed on the door. It swung open without hesitation and Rose beamed. She pat the frame with a smile and whispered, "Thanks, girl."

Rose was not psychic, but if asked she would have sworn she felt a thrill of something _other _trace across her mind in response. Without meaning to, she recalled the little golden spark that leapt between her fingertip and the console monitor earlier in the week. Determined to figure out what was going on, she resolved to find the words to explain both occurrences to the Doctor as soon as they were off this planet.

Rose stepped into the TARDIS. "Doctor!" She called when he didn't appear immediately. She turned back to the entrance to see Belinda-9 lingering there a shocked expression on her face.

"Sorry! I should have explained, huh?" Rose laughed a little. She knew the Doctor loved to startle people with the ship, but she was still close enough to her own surprise the first time she saw it that she remembered how world shaking it felt. "This is the TARDIS, she's my friend's ship. She's, uh, bigger on the inside?"

Belinda-9 tucked her head to her chest in a gesture Rose did not know. She hoped it meant 'yes' and not 'this is the final straw, you've asked too much of me tiny human'.

"It is," the other woman breathed. "It is a marvel."

Rose grinned, "Oh, I wish he'd heard you say that. He's like a peacock the way he likes to show off. Speaking of- Doctor!" Her shout echoed around the space and Rose suddenly knew without a doubt in her mind that they were the only living beings in the TARDIS. Her breath caught in her chest.

"He's- He isn't here," she whispered. Belinda-9's huge hand came down on her shoulder in a comforting pat. Rose leaned into the contact. It wasn't the touch she wanted but apparently that touch was... gone. She pulled away and approached the console, laying both hands on smooth metal.

"We saved him, old girl," she whispered, "Just last week. You showed me so much, why not this? Why help me save him if he was only going to be erased a week later?" She could feel something terrible brewing in her gut, the desire to scream and rage and find that golden light again and use it to reduce this entire world to the ashes it had made of her Doctor. She let the feeling wash over her for a few long seconds before taking a deep breath and shoving it away.

With her mind more clear she realized the monitor was turned on. Gallifreyan symbols spiraled their way across the screen and Rose cursed the fact that the Doctor had not taught her to read alongside their speaking lessons. She could identify some of the elements just from having seen them so many times, but the whole of each symbol was lost on her. She stared at the screen. The TARDIS appeared to be repeating the same two symbols over and over, first one, then the other, and then both at once inside a larger circle. Rose was sure she knew the first one; there were five circles and five dots and she'd thought that was nice and symmetrical, even if the symbol itself was constantly shifting...

"Five not six," she murmured and the little mnemonic worked, "Not! That one's not, right?" The screen flashed green the same way it had when she sat curled up in the jumpseat desperate to learn the language. She laughed.

"Okay, so the next one." She stared at it, but after only a few moments she was sure she'd never seen it before. "Sorry, I don't know that one."

"Rose?" Belinda-9 said from the entrance, "Rose there's a-"

"Kuliros!" She was swept up in a fierce embrace, long arms wrapped around her, pressing her nose into a brown suit with thin blue pinstripes. She breathed in and instead of dust she smelled the subtle tang of the aftershave he'd been wearing ever since he changed. She returned the hug as tightly as she was able with her splinted arm.

"Doctor," she muttered into his chest. "You absolute arse, I thought you were dead!"

He laughed and kissed the top of her head. She wanted to press closer, but her arm was really beginning to ache. So, she pulled back and looked him over. He did the same, frowning at the now fairly dirty splint.

* * *

Oh he was so happy to have her back by his side. He hadn't realized just how very lonely he'd felt until she was here and he could smell her and touch her. Even when she pulled back, he steadfastly refused to remove his arm from around her shoulders. They'd been separated and he was only just now coming down from the fear he'd not wanted to acknowledge before. Only a week ago he'd thought he would have to watch her die (only a week ago he'd died kissing her, he was ashamed to admit how often he relived that moment). The splint he'd wrapped around her broken arm was filthy and he desperately wanted to drag Rose to the Infirmary, scan her arm, and fit her with a proper cast. But, she seemed unbothered by it and she was pulling him over to the large Gullinet he'd shoved past a few moments earlier.

"Belinda-9," Rose said pointing to the other woman. Then, she said something else and the woman responded. He couldn't help but notice the wonder in her eyes as she looked at the pair of them. Again he cursed his current difficulties, he wanted to know what had happened to make her look at them that way.

"Belinda-9 help I," Rose said very slowly, clearly searching for each word as she went. She paused and frowned then pulled her uninjured hand free of his and made a sweeping motion before wriggling her fingers. She did both motions again and said, "Many things go away."

Oh! He understood, she was trying to tell him about whatever atomized everything on the surface of the planet. His understanding quickly turned to frustration when he realized that with a bare week of lessons there was no way Rose was going to be able to explain the problem to him in the level of detail he needed. He held up one finger, telling her to wait. Then he stepped away and scrubbed his hands through his hair. He needed to think, surely there was a solution to his issue he was missing. He began to pace.

"Think, think," he muttered without realizing he was speaking aloud. "What's the point of all this brain if it can't come up with a way to fix itself?" He made a circuit of the console, running his hand along the switches and levers and buttons as he went. "Right, okay, I wake up too early which is good because Rose was going to be killed by a bloody tree and that's not on but then _kapow _neural implosion which is bad. So, I've got some neurons that refuse to connect to where they should and-" His fingers jammed into a sharp protrusion on the console and he paused to shake them out and glare. He heard Rose snicker and twisted to direct the glare at her only to find he could not. She was leaned towards the Gullinet as if they'd been speaking and grinning broadly at him. He groaned, in his frustration he'd completely forgotten they weren't alone and now he'd probably made Belida-9 think he was a madman. Oh, he wished he could just erase all of this. Better yet, he wished his brain was even slightly closer to a human's. They couldn't experience neural implosions or- He froze.

He turned back to the console. "Surely it's not that-" The TARDIS seemed to sense what he was thinking because she lowered the helmet down from where it sat nestled in the tangle of wires far above.

"Will it work?" he asked the ship. The sensation she returned was akin to a noncommittal shrug. "Well, that's not a denial, I suppose." He looked down at the helmet and then back up at Rose. Her smile had faded from one of amusement to one of genuine fondness. Oh, sod it, he thought. If this was what he needed to do to ensure that he could not only fix things on this planet for those kids but also have actual, real conversations with his Rose again... Well, that wasn't even a decision really.

He yanked the monitor down and pulled up the most recent scan of his typical brain patterns she had on file. Then, he set the Chameleon Arch for Time Lord physiology.

He took one last look at Rose. Oh, she was going to be so mad at him. But, if this worked he'd be able to understand her again and that was worth any yelling that might occur. "Don't be afraid," he said as confidently as he could, "I'll be alright."

He put the helmet on and pressed the button.

He screamed.


	10. Garden Path Sentences

A/N: I'm using a bit of a blended canon for Gallifrey here. So, for the purposes of this story; children are loomed, but they are removed from the loom at around 18 months of development to be raised by their House. It was wartime, so I would think the Houses had a larger dispensation for number of children that can be loomed. Any children from the same families genetic material are considered cousins with their primary genetic donor being their parent ('parents' can be comprised of any number or combination of individuals). The Doctor has a mother.

I'm nervous about this one! I hope y'all like it :)

**Chapter 10: Garden Path Sentences**

There was an old Gallifreyan folk tale that he'd enjoyed as a child. It told of a creature called the _Geralijak _which was so fearsome that time itself fled before it. No living being could form memories of the creature's appearance, only recalling that they had looked upon it and been frightened. It was the creature that lurked around the edges of stories about heroes (who desired only to slay it) and scholars (who said, no no, we must learn from it) and even lonely little boys who had never quite got on with their cousins (who thought, maybe they'll like me more if I can tell them about it).

On good days, on days when the memory of his people and his home did not burn like fire, he liked to think of the way his mother's mouth had curled around the name of the creature, a little twist of the lips, a sharp inhale of breath, a rasping trill. She had so enjoyed telling him and his cousins stories. They would gather around the largest hall of their House and crowd close together so that even their cool skin might be warmed by proximity and they would listen as she wove tales of dramatic heroes and clever plots.

On bad days, he could only think of how many of those cousins perished in the war, how many he killed in one final blow to save everyone else. On bad days he could only picture the way his mother's mouth would have looked as she tried to reassure the Household that all would be well, that her son would come for them. He'd not even known the House was under assault when the Daleks destroyed it. He never knew they were waiting until it was already too late and he was picking his way through the final security recordings, torturing himself for one last glimpse of his mother he loved more than anything else in the wide Universe.

What he found instead was that he might not have been there, but Romana was. His mother called for help and Romana answered. He had collapsed to the ground then, his fingers clutching at the cracked viewscreen. The Doctor wasn't sure he ever loved Romana the way she wanted to be loved, nor was he sure that Romana had loved him in that way. But, he did know that his hearts beat faster when she smiled at him and her hand felt right in his and now he knew that she was dead and he would never find out if they might one day have grown to love each other in the way they wanted. Worse than that was the knowledge that while he had been off exploring the stars (neglecting his duties and his family, the insidious little voice in his head insisted), Romana had stayed and fought and done the paperwork they both hated so much. She'd given up the stars without protest or bitterness.

She'd died trying to save his mother.

He wondered if she'd hated him before she died.

He'd understand if she did, he hated himself after all.

He wondered if any of his children had been in the House, if any had been visiting their grandmother.

(In a darker part of his mind he wondered if they even still lived to visit. He'd heard a few years back that his eldest son, dear Susan's father, was being heralded as a hero of the Sinking Reach- the bravest Time Lord of the age, who perished so that others might live. He'd not yet had the courage to tell Susan or even to visit the memorial. A twice damned coward.)

There was a Dalek eye-stalk on the ground beside him. The security camera footage showed Romana and his mother fighting side by side, their faces fierce and their eyes wild. Every once in a while, he could see his mother pause and glance at a camera. She would mouth something, but the resolution was too low for him to make it out.

He hoped she wasn't saying goodbye. He hoped she hadn't known she was going to die.

It was then, trying to puzzle out his mother's final words that he thought of the story of the _Geralijak, _The Memory Thief, for the first time in years.

Oh how he wished to stand before one now and scream the names of his mother and Romana so that the beast might seal their memories away where they could no longer hurt him. He knew that made him a coward, but he'd been avoiding fighting in a war for so long he was afraid there was nothing but cowardice left in him.

His thoughts swam about, tangled and torn. He knew that he was remembering that terrible day because he had thought about the Memory Thief which made him think of his mother which made him think of her reaching out for him as she was murdered, a casualty of a war she had no part in.

But why was he thinking of the Memory Thief? He tried to puzzle his way back to coherent thought.

It felt like something loomed before him. Something important, something Universe shaking. He knew without knowing how he knew that he was to face a choice, but he could not see what that choice was just yet.

He tried to force him mind into compliance, to drag the choice from the depths so that he might make it and be done with it. He did not enjoy being forced to relive his worst memories with no chance of respite. There was something that pushed back against him, something artificial. It tasted of metal and desperation and he suddenly understood that whatever was happening, he'd deemed it necessary.

He'd done this to himself.

With that thought he relaxed. Only a little, but it was enough to open the door in his mind and suddenly she was there.

"Romana?" he whispered. "What happened? Where are we?"

He looked around. He was sure he'd just been somewhere else but when he tried to grasp it the memory slipped away, held in the claws of a _Geralijak. _

Of course he hadn't been anywhere else, what a silly idea. He'd been here in the TARDIS with Romana, just like he was meant to be.

Romana set her book down and approached him. She reached out and touched the sides of his face, her fingers gentle and soft. A bolt of pain flashed through him but it was gone and forgotten before he could even begin to process or understand.

"You look tired," she said with a little smile. Her hair was short now, she'd been wearing it cropped close to her head ever since she'd been recalled to Gallifrey. It suited her, he thought. Her thumb brushed the bags under his right eye.

"I am tired," he whispered. They were speaking Gallifreyan, he realized and then wondered why that was strange. Surely they should be speaking the language? If Romana was here then he was visiting Gallifrey (and why did that feel so wrong? Why did it set off such terrible alarms in his mind? Why- The feeling faded, the _Geralijak _grinned).

"Oh Doctor," she laughed a little, "You've been sleeping for days, what do you have to be tired about?"

That- That didn't sound right. He almost never slept. He knew that. He had no wish to miss even a moment of his companions' lives. Especially not since Ros- His mind threw up a shrieking barrier and he turned away from the thought.

He supposed he must have been sleeping. Romana wouldn't lie after all.

"Apologies," he muttered, trying for a smile. This new mouth was good at smiling, it wanted to smile all the time. He liked it much better than his previous mouth (meant for scowls and smirks and only the occasional beaming grin). Again he ran up against a jangling chord of _wrongwrongwrong _.

(Romana never knew this face.)

"So," he clapped his hands and laughed at her little surprised jump, "Where shall we go? Anywhere you'd like! You get away so rarely these days after all."

"Well, I can't decide," she said slowly. She tapped one slender finger against her chin. "Tell me a few options."

He thought frantically, hoping to come up with something to impress her. He yanked on his earlobe.

"There's always Earth," he said slowly. Of course Romana had been there many times before, but a trip to Earth never disappointed him. He hoped it would be the same for her.

She nodded and there was something strange about her eyes.

"Yes," she said. Her voice sounded wrong he realized and then immediately forgot. "There is Earth. There's also home."

He cocked his head to one side, scratched one sideburn, and shifted his weight back and forth. Why was that suggestion so, well, upsetting?

"Home?" he asked, "You mean my House? But that was-" _destroyed. _He couldn't even think the end of that sentence before the eager Beast stole it away. It was growing fat off him.

"Home." Her voice was warm, melodic, hypnotizing.

Home. He thought of silver trees and russet grass and the way the suns danced around each other like a Gallifreyan heartbeat.

Home. Home was the press of cousin's shoulders against his own and his mother's gentle hands guiding him as he learned to write and her smile when she woke him in the morning. Home was a smile.

A smile.

A smile framed by blond hair and pink fabric and a carefree laugh.

He was gasping for breath and he wasn't breathing at all and- _Oh, _there was an odd sensation at the base of his skull, like something scratching through the short hair.

"Romana?" he asked. The _Geralijak _stalked closer, low and lean and ready to strike.

"You must choose," Romana did not sound like Romana at all and he hated that. _Hated _that whatever this was had plucked her image from his mind and was daring to use her in this way. She was a person, he thought even as he swiped a hand across the back of his neck, a person who died and who did not deserve to be used in this way.

"Stop," he told her, "Please."

"Choose," She said and now her voice was many layered. It was him and it was her and it was every voice he'd ever had and his mother and his children and Susan and it was-

Oh, it was Rose. He could remember her now.

"What am I choosing?" he asked even as he tucked the memory of Rose away in his heart, safe from the Thief.

"Where we will travel, Doctor," the entity, for it was no longer Romana or anything even vaguely bipedal, said. As it spoke it's face melded, shifted, individual features growing and falling away. The beast approached closer.

"I-" he broke off. He wanted to answer and he did not know why he wanted that. This entity was using his memories against him, why should he do anything it wanted.

Suddenly, the shifting features coalesced for a brief moment into his mother's face. She smiled at him.

"My precious boy," she pressed her palm to his cheek and he knew it was a lie but he could not help but lean into the touch. "You must choose."

"Why?" His voice broke.

Her eyes were shining. It was all a manifestation of the way he was feeling, he knew that, but it was hard to remember when his mother was about to cry before him.

"Because there's something wrong with you," she answered. "Something broken inside."

Oh, oh he was not ready to hear such words of condemnation from his mother. She'd never known what a failure he was, what a coward. She died long before he became the bitter old man, broken by the war.

"Mother," he whispered.

She shook her head and smiled.

"Not like that," now she sounded fond. "You woke too early, you know that. And you, my clever boy, you found a way to fix it. But, you must choose."

"I don't understand!" He gripped her wrists, holding her hands to his face, desperate for her not to pull away. The beast stalked closer. He could feel its hot breath on his neck now, so close. And then he blinked and it was not his mother before him but himself, the himself from just over a week ago.

"You are a Time Lord," he said, lip curling upward, "With a Time Lord mind." The old Doctor pulled his hands free of his own grip and stepped back.

"I died for this," he said very quietly. "For her."

And he understood. He knew the choice he had forced upon himself.

To fix a Time Lord mind he'd used the scan of a Time Lord mind. It made sense at the time. But, there were no time Lord's quite like him, none who had seen the things he'd seen or lived through what he'd lived through.

There were no other Time Lords who were as alone as him.

He opened his eyes, realizing for the first time that he'd closed them at all.

"Rose?" Because the being before him was no longer his mother or Romana or himself.

It was Rose and she was smiling at him and he knew exactly what _home _meant.

The Beast snarled, but he paid it no mind.

He knew the choice now, knew the shape of it.

His mind had been irrevocably damaged by the loss of his people, there was no way around that for a telepathic species. The Chameleon Arch wanted to fix that damage but the only way it knew how to to remove the years of memories built upon that damage. To remove the entirety of his ninth incarnation.

To remove Rose.

The Memory Thief crowed with triumph even the thought manifested. He recoiled from its pleasure.

His previous incarnation was right, he thought, he'd died to save Rose. She had so many years left to live, but he would have done it even if all it bought her was a few more moments. The universe was better when she was in it.

He was better with her.

He turned away from the entity wearing Rose's face.

"I'm ready to make my choice," he told the Beast.

It surged forward, suddenly too large to be comprehended in a single thought. Black ichor dripped from its teeth and reflected in it he could see himself; fluffy hair, freckles, and all. He swallowed.

"I'm going to go home," the Doctor said.

The _Geralijak _stood very still, fetid breath washing over him and he waited. One breath. Two. He did not retreat. A third breath hit him. Slowly, he smelled less rot and more dry dust.

Behind him, the entity spoke in his own voice, and his old voice with it's northern burr, and Romana's silky smooth tones, and Rose's clipped vowels. It spoke with his mother's warmth and love and against his will he teared up.

"Home," the many voiced entity said.

"Home," he repeated.

* * *

Rose watched in horror as the Doctor screamed. He'd smiled so calmly at her just before he put on the funny looking helmet, she hadn't expected him to behave this way. She wanted to grab the horrible thing from him, to rip it from his head and hold him until he stopped trembling. She took one step forward, her hands coming up even as he collapsed to his knees.

"What is happening to him?" Belinda-9 asked. She'd crossed the space to stand directly behind Rose.

Rose didn't answer. She couldn't find words when he was making the noises he was making. The screams had stopped, but each gasping breath he took was punctuated by a tiny pained noise. He was slowly slumping to the side so she darted across the remaining space between them.

"Oof," she grunted, surprised by his weight. She let herself fall backwards, landing on her bum on the grating with him against her chest, his long legs splayed out between her and Belinda-9.

The Doctor's ragged breaths shifted towards whimpers. Rose worked her uninjured hand out from beneath him. She found the fringe of his hair that poked out beneath the back of the helmet and gently scratched at his scalp.

"Is he alright?" Belinda-9 asked very quietly.

Rose looked up at her. "I don't know," she said, "I've never seen this thing," she tilted her head towards the helmet, "before. But- He smiled, right? He looked like he knew what he was doing?"

Belinda-9 shrugged. Her huge shoulders were bowed slightly inward in her confusion and discomfort. Rose had a sudden thought.

She stopped scratching the Doctor's head for long enough to point to one of the hallways that left the console room. "There's a kitchen through there," she said, "The non-perishable food is in the cabinets up top and cold stuff in the fridge. Take it all."

Belinda-9 stared at her for a long minute. She opened her mouth, then without another word turned on her heel and half jogged away. Rose silently asked the TARDIS to make sure there were a few duffel bags waiting for the other woman.

As soon as she was gone, Rose turned back to the Doctor.

"Come back to me, Doctor," she whispered in English and then, more slowly, in Gallifreyan, "Uaj rekeghi."

He did not respond. She leaned her head against his, scowling at the cold metal. His breath caught slightly.

It didn't use to be like this, she thought, things used to be so simple. They went to the end of the Earth and he made her angry and they danced and he made her happy and she made him laugh sometimes. She missed him fiercely. She'd been so wrapped up in trying to have even one conversation with her new Doctor that she'd never really realized what she'd lost. She'd give anything to see that dopey smile again.

He shifted slightly in her arms and she hugged him tighter reflexively.

She wanted her old Doctor back, but even after only a week of knowing him, she did not think she'd be able to give this one up. He radiated a sort of hurt insecurity beneath all the incomprehensible chatter that she ached to soothe.

Besides, he had the same kind eyes. So ancient and so full of wonder. Sometimes he looked at her the same way he'd looked at the children the night everybody lived and she wanted to keep seeing that look for the rest of her life.

She sighed and, after glancing towards the kitchen to see if Belinda-9 was on her way back yet, pressed a kiss to the cool metal.

"Please," she said, "Come home to me."

He twitched. Groaned. His head rolled back, forcing her to lean to the side to avoid the wires and tubes protruding from the helmet.

His eyes fluttered.

"Doctor?" she whispered.

"Hrng," he said. Despite her fear and exhaustion, Rose giggled.

"So good with words," she told him.

"Ack," he said, "Rose?"

"Doctor!" She was already holding him, but she tightened her arms in a fierce hug. Then, she smacked his shoulder. "Don't you dare do that again! What was that?!"

"Hey, hey, stop!" He yelped, twisting in her hold. He staggered to his feet, then nearly toppled right back over when the wires pulled taut and yanked him backwards. Rose laughed, pleased beyond what she thought was possible to see him so animated after such a sudden and dramatic series of events.

"Thank you! Oh, that's so much better. Do I have helmet hair?" he ran one hand through his sweat soaked hair. "Ugh," he grimaced, "That's disgusting."

Rose reached up to help him rearrange his hair into something approaching order. "It's fine," she said, "Well, not fine, but it's cute like this."

"I am not _cute _," he said, clearly trying to sound intimidating and failing.

"You-"

Rose froze.

"Doctor," she said, "Oh my- Doctor!"

"Yes!" He said, "That's me. Rose, did you hit your head?"

Rose rolled her eyes. Oh, he was so dense. "Doctor, I'm speaking English," she said slowly, watching as his eyes widened in realization, "And so are you."

"English!" he crowed. He grabbed her up and spun her in a tight circle, holding her tight to him. "I'm speaking English! It worked! I mean, obviously it worked, I'm dead brilliant, I am."

Rose felt like her heart was going to burst with joy. She pulled herself free of his arms, leaning back just enough to look him in the eyes.

"What did you do, Doctor?" she asked.

"Knocked my brain back to factory settings," he said, "or, well, not quite." A dark look crossed his face. She knew that look. It was the same one he'd worn when facing Harriet Jones just after she destroyed the Sycorax ship or when facing down the Dalek in Nevada.

"Doctor?" She asked quietly.

"Yeah?" He sounded a little raspy now, the exuberant joy fading to exhaustion.

"Are you really alright?" She took his hand and let him reel her back in to his side. He kissed the top of her head. She closed her eyes, trying not to let herself cry and confused about why she even felt like it in the first place.

"It's not a pleasant thing," he said slowly, "rebuilding neural connections. Remember that neural implosion on Christmas?" She nodded. "It severed some of my oldest pathways. I was still regenerating, so the neurons were preserved, held in a sort of stasis. I'd hoped they would heal on their own, but they weren't and I needed to know what's going on here." He gestured to the door, then kicked the helmet lightly. "So I used this. It's called the chameleon arch. It can turn me into another species, but I set it for Time Lord."

"And it knew what those connections were supposed to look like?" Rose asked.

He nodded.

"Yeah, but like I said, it's unpleasant."

"You screamed," she said, feeling very small.

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you what was going to happen," he said. "I know you were scared when I regenerated."

Suddenly Rose had more questions than she had words for. What was regeneration? He'd sort of explained just after it happened, but she was terrified and hurting and wanted to know more. Could something like that happen again? Was he really okay now? She opened her mouth to ask any one of them, but he was still talking.

"Rose, I-"

Belinda-9 reappeared and the Doctor stiffened. He pulled away from Rose.

"Hello there," he said, "I'm the Doctor. I see Rose told you about the food." Rose's mood lifted at his blatant admiration, "That's good, that's very good. But, we're going to do better than that."

"Oh?" Belinda-9 asked. She sounded wary and Rose tried to catch her eye and give her an encouraging nod.

"Obviously," he said, "We're going to fix this. No one else is going to be atomized, not on my watch."

Rose's heart soared. She still had questions and worries, but she could understand him and he could understand her and she'd not realized before what a luxury that was. Despite having moved slightly away, his arm was still around her shoulder and she couldn't stop herself from leaning against him. He responded by squeezing her shoulder.

"Now," the Doctor said, "Rose Tyler, Belinda-9, tell me absolutely everything you know."

* * *

A/N: I know the first half is a bit odd! To clarify since the Doctor is not the most reliable narrator here; the Chameleon Arch has Time Lord schematics, but the Doctor's brain isn't like a normal Time Lord's because of the psychic trauma of losing the entire race he was linked to. So, the Arch has two options; 1) just fix it all and make him like the Time Lord it has on file, or 2) repair the obvious damage without altering other structures (essentially this is the 'do nothing' option for a confused machine). The Arch tries to communicate this to him by asking him to chose between the options but it can only use his memories and thoughts to do that so it all gets a little jumbled. The Memory Thief is the manifestation of the Arch.


	11. A Threat to Negative Face

A/N: An individual's 'negative face' is their desire to remain autonomous, to be unimpeded in their actions. So, you can threaten their negative face by asking them to perform a task that they might not otherwise chose to do (e.g. to help you move apartments or loan you their rake). Positive face is a person's desire to be well regarded by those around them (so you threaten it by insulting them or otherwise doing something that might lead to their reputation taking a hit). We mitigate face threatening acts using various politeness strategies.

:)

**Chapter 11: A Threat to Negative Face**

Rose was distracted. Oh, she wanted to pay attention to the words actually leaving the Doctor's mouth, it was a gift she had not anticipated after all, but she found her attention drifting. It was just... _Of course_, she'd heard him speak before. They'd had one stilted conversation in the TARDIS just after he changed and another that ended in his collapse after the... tree... incident. But, well, he had spent both of those brief interactions in pain or afraid or worried about her reaction. Then, he couldn't talk to her at all and suddenly all their conversations were stilted and slow. She'd seen how frustrated he was by the dam up in his mind, the slow release of words in a language no one but him spoke.

Now though? He was animated, grinning and serious all at once, displaying the sort of determination she'd seen flashes of since his changed. He looked healthy and cheerful, despite the terrible problem he was trying to solve and _she should be happy._ She knew it. She knew she should be ecstatic because he wasn't hurting anymore and they might go back to how they'd been.

Except.

Well, there was no going back was there? Her Doctor, the Doctor who'd held out his hand and shown her the end of her world before taking her for chips, he was gone and Rose hadn't realized until just now what exactly that meant.

No more big ears or goofy smiles, no more smell of leather or blue eyes crinkled with a grin he seemed almost ashamed of allowing. No more northern burr to his vowels.

Now she had a gangly stranger with a shock of fluffy hair and a smile that curled at the corners. He was still right fit, just in a very different way than he had been. Plimsolls instead of boots.

Her heart twisted in her chest because she wanted to be happy and she wanted to be sad and she couldn't bring herself to be fully either thing.

So, Rose sat on the hard grating on the TARDIS console room and watched as her new Doctor first listened to Belinda-9's explanation of the Scan and then exploded into nervous motion. He couldn't seem to stop moving these days, like his brain only worked at the same pace as his feet. During their lessons this last week, he'd constantly been popping up from the floor or the sofa or whatever vaguely horizontal surface he'd last thrown himself upon to gesture and demonstrate and generally faff about while she tried to remember how verbs worked.

"Right," he said, "So, your engineers try to solve disease. Which, first of all, that's a bad idea. Oh, I'm sure it came from a good place, the worst ideas always do, but really how did you think it was going to turn out? That you'd just get rid of all germs and then... what? No one would ever visit your planet again and you'd be suddenly safe from one of the few universal constants? Please."

Belinda-9 had her arms folded across her vast chest. "It as not my plan," she rumbled. Rose wondered in the Doctor had always been so incapable of sensing when he was toeing a dangerous line in conversation. It was obvious that the other woman was bordering on insulted and yet... The Doctor kept talking.

He flapped one hand at her, "Of course it wasn't, Rose wouldn't be friends with anyone that dumb. Well, except Ricky but we all make exceptions."

And then he did something she'd never seen him do before.

He said something rude, then turned to look at her, a little smile on his face and his eyes wide. It was, Rose realized with a desperate desire to groan, a joke. He'd made jokes before (obviously) but of a very different sort. Now, he was looking at her and inviting her to laugh with him or scold him or react in some way.

She settled on scowling. He knew her feelings about how rude he was to Mickey, a scowl instead of a laugh wouldn't lead to suspicion. Wouldn't lead to the sorts of questions she wasn't sure she had answers for right now. Except, well, she'd made a rather critical oversight. Because, in all her thoughts on how he'd changed, she'd forgotten something very important- he was not just the Doctor, he was _her_ Doctor and he knew her better than anyone else in the universe at this point.

So, instead of accepting her scowl and moving on, his manic energy puttered to a halt. He looked at her much more seriously, leaning forward slightly.

"Are you alright, Rose?" he asked. He still drew out the vowel of her name, she realized, still savored it the same way he had when speaking Gallifreyan.

Rose tried to smile at him. She was _happy_, she really was.

She was.

His own grin had entirely faded now. His hands, which had been gesturing wildly as he spoke, fell to his sides. He looked between Rose and Belinda-9 before seeming to come to a decision.

"Is it safe for you to go back to the tunnels?" he asked Belinda-9.

Belinda-9 looked between the two of them. She had a complicated look on her face that Rose did not understand.

"Rose," she said as quietly as she could manage. Even still, her voice could only be classified as a rumble. "Could I-?" She gestured towards the door, away from the Doctor. Rose pulled herself to her feet with her good hand, realizing once more how very uncomfortable her broken arm had become.

She shot the Doctor a reassuring look as she crossed the space to stand beside Belinda-9. She trusted the other woman and knew that she wasn't a danger, but the Doctor had only just met her and tended to be over protective, even in less fraught times.

"Yeah?" Rose asked when she was close enough to speak quietly and be heard over the background noise of the TARDIS.

"Are you," Belinda-9 hesitated, glancing over to the Doctor. Rose followed her gaze and had to suppress the urge to smile. He was acting deeply engrossed in something on the viewscreen, a little furrow between his brows and a downward tilt to his lips. It might have been a convincing act if his eyes didn't keep drifting towards the women before darting back to the viewscreen. In fact, Rose would have been willing to bet almost anything that what he was actually doing was trying very, very hard to eavesdrop without appearing to do so.

"Are you safe with this man?" Belinda-9 asked. Rose blinked. That- that was not what she had expected to hear at all. Belinda-9 saw her pause and continue, "I have not known you long little one, but you arrived to me with a broken limb and your... companion does not seem very stable." Her gravel-against-metal voice was low, a rumbling half-growl that Rose suddenly discovered made her feel incredibly fond.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rose could see the Doctor grow very still, losing all pretense of not listening to them.

"There's no safer place in the universe," Rose said and she knew it was true. Sure, they frequently stumbled into trouble and had to run for their lives more days than not, but she also knew, without a shadow of doubt or hesitation, that the Doctor would move the literal stars to help her if she needed it.

Belinda-9 studied her for another few seconds before nodding. "If you're sure," she said, "You don't have long before the next Scan, I'll keep the tunnel open for you as long as I can."

Overwhelmed by gratitude for the huge woman, Rose surged forward and wrapped her arms as far around her as she could. Belinda-9 was a furnace, solid and warm and incredibly reassuring to press her face against. Massive hands covered her back, holding her close and secure and suddenly Rose was fighting back a few traitorous tears. So much had happened, had changed, in the last week and Rose realized how very badly she wanted to hug her mum.

* * *

Emotions were odd things, the Doctor often thought, little surges of chemicals and interactions that flooded one's body with molecules that manipulated thoughts and the ways the world might be perceived. At different times he loved them and hated them, and even those views were themselves dictated by chemistry.

Just now, he was trying to fight back a veritable flood of complex organic molecules that wanted to tug him into feeling things he was sure would be overwhelming at best and debilitating at worst. He should have anticipated that using the Chameleon Arch in the way he had would have an effect on the delicate balance of his internal chemistry, tilting him from equilibrium towards chaos.

Adrenaline swept across him, heightening every other feeling and the corners of his eyes pricked as he watched Belinda-9 embrace Rose. The human leaned into the Gullinets' chest, her slim form almost entirely engulfed by the reptiliform. He felt shaky and odd, thrown from the rockers of logical thought by the implication that he had hurt Rose, that he even seemed like the sort of person who would hurt- He was not offended or hurt. Rather, he realized he was feeling guilty. Rose was hurt and clearly feeling a bit overwrought, her own chemical cocktail driving her to seek comfort from the closest maternal figure available. He caught the faint scent of salt and realized she was crying.

That's it. They were going to find the nicest, safest, most boring beach planet out there and spend a solid week laying in the sand and getting a tan and then he was going to take her to see the diamond cliffs of Hureshiin and they would watch the sunset refract through the crystals into a riot of rainbows and then he would apologize for everything in the last two weeks.

(Briefly, the thought of finding Jack and dragging him along occurred, but the same something that rebelled and ached at the Bad Wolf's effect on the other man screamed out and he knew he wasn't ready for that yet. It didn't matter, he told himself, he had a time machine, he could go back to the moment they left Jack and it would all be okay. He just needed a little more time to get used to a living Fixed Point.)

Eventually, Belinda-9 pat Rose one final time on the back and pulled away. The Doctor watched as Rose sniffed and scrubbed away the evidence of her tears. The chemicals betrayed him again and suddenly all he could think about was kissing the salt from her cheeks, pressing his forehead to hers and holding her until she smiled and laughed and-

"Remember," Belinda-9 said loudly to include him in the conversation. He forced himself away from those impossible thoughts, "You only have a short time, don't wait about."

The Doctor nodded. No, they would follow in only a few minutes, he had no desire to put either Rose or the TARDIS at risk.

"A few minutes and then we're in the caves," he assured her, "Just need a quick convo with Rose."

Belinda-9 gave him one more measuring look and he found himself wondering if she was related to the children he'd met before. They had the same sort of even, judgmental quality about their expressions. Then, she hefted the bags of food into her arms and was gone.

Rose watched her leave, turned half away from him with her arms wrapped around her stomach. An awkward silence descended upon them.

"Ah, I, uh," he rubbed one hand down the back of his neck. His gaze snagged on the cast, "Come on, let's get that fixed up before we go back out there."

Rose jerked, as if startled by his speech and he winced. _Of course_ understanding him was going to be a bit of a shock and here he'd been, babbling away like normal. Even now the desire to speak was pressing against his throat, words clamoring to escape and fill the silence. He had a feeling the mouth on this iteration of himself was going to be the stuff of legend.

She looked down at her arm. "Sure," she said, "Yeah, okay."

He stood very still as she crossed the space between the door and the hallway that would lead to the infirmary. He didn't know where this hesitation was coming from, he'd been perfectly comfortable curled up in the loveseat in the library not three days ago. Why was he now so unsure about moving closer? His entire body burned with the memory of their embrace when he'd entered the TARDIS.

"Doctor?" Rose asked, "Are you coming?"

He jerked himself from his runaway thoughts to hurry to her side. She grinned up at him as he approached and something in his chest settled just a bit. She'd been so quiet since the revelation that he could speak something other than Gallifreyan again, he was- well, he was realizing now that he'd been worried.

"So," Rose said, wrapping her good arm around his, "What did you get up to while I was making friends?" She still sounded a bit hesitant, a bit unsure, but she was smiling and she was touching him and that would always be enough.

"Oh, you know," he said with a smile, "This and that. Made some friends of my own, ate some fruit, met the locals."

"And they didn't try to kill you? I'm impressed." There it was, there was that cheeky smile he so adored. His hearts thumped in tandem and he had to swallow away the nebulous emotion that tried to overcome him.

"I'll have you know I'm very well liked in most places," he said archly, "People love me."

They entered the infirmary.

"Really? Why haven't we ever visited a place where they like you then?"

He helped her up onto the exam table and turned away to pick up the osteogenerator.

"Maybe it's you," he mused, "I've never been in as much trouble as I have since you joined me. Maybe they don't like you."

She stuck her tongue out at him and _oh_\- that really was unfair wasn't it? She had no right to make him feel so irrepressibly fond, so deeply, madly, irrevocably in- Well, to make him feel the way she did at such a childish gesture.

He crinkled his nose at her in retaliation and suddenly they were laughing. The odd tension in the air vanished.

"Let's take care of that," he said when he managed to breathe normally again. He was still smiling and, he realized with mild shock, he had no desire to ever stop. Smiles had felt so rare and precious before and now, well, Rose was looking down at him and holding out her arm and he couldn't imagine not smiling.

He flicked the switch on the little device, slowly running it across the outside of the ragged split. Rose giggled again.

"Tickles," she said, "Oh that's so weird."

He snorted, "Humans. I use a bit of technology your people won't invent for nearly a thousand years and all you can say is it tickles."

She nudged his ribcage with the toe of her shoe. "Rude," she said. He shrugged. It might be rude, but it was true and she didn't look mad.

They subsided into a much more comfortable silence than before.

"How are we going to help them?" Rose asked after a few minutes and he delighted in the plural pronoun.

"Well," he said, drawing out the word, "I think it really should be a simple fix. Or a simple not-fix."

"What does that mean?"

He paused to focus the osteogenerator on the worst portion of the break then spoke slowly, trying to explain his idea without sounding condescending or rude.

"They're idea was rotten from the start," he said, "You can't just decide to get rid of all the bacteria on an entire planet. That's not, that's not the way nature works. Even if the Scan hadn't gone wrong they would have had a total ecological collapse." He looked up. Rose was watching the small movements of the osteogenerator with a tiny line of concentration between her brows. "At the most basic level, the soil needs bacteria to break down dead roots into nutrients and without that nothing would ever grow. They'd have starved even if it worked as it was meant to."

"But, what about the diseases? Couldn't they have just picked which germs to get rid of and which to keep?"

He shook his head.

"Not at this scale. You can do that sort of thing for a single person, maybe a single room, but not an entire planet."

"That's why the version of the Scan in the entry shaft worked?"

He nodded, though this was the first he had heard of anything like that. There was no reason why a small scale version of the technology shouldn't work.

"Yes," he said, "So, really there is no fixing it. All we can do is destroy it and make sure they never build anything like it again."

Rose sighed. "That makes sense," she said, "But I still don't like it. All they wanted was to not get sick. I hate that Belinda-9 lost her partner because of something that was meant to be good."

He thought of the way the children had watched him eat his slice of fruit, their eyes huge and shining. He swallowed back the guilt.

"Yeah," he agreed.

The osteogenerator beeped in indication that its job was complete. He set it aside and picked up a small pair of scissors to cut away the bandages.

"The only problem is knowing where the main interface is located," he said, "They've lost so much, so many people. I'm not sure there's anyone who still remembers."

"Belinda-9 might?" Rose suggested, "She was telling me about her partner, Terry-K3. She said he was an engineer and that he'd worked on a lot of big projects. Maybe he worked on something to do with the scan? She'd have known where he was going to be working, right?"

He grinned up at her even as he kept slowly unwrapping the bandaged.

"Rose Tyler, you are an utter gift," he said.

"Why?"

"Because, I can do us one better than asking Belinda-9 if she remembers."

"Oh yeah?"

He nodded, "When I was trying to get into the shaft where you fell, I ran into a child who dragged me to the caves just in time to avoid, well, you know."

He shuddered at the memory of the other Gullinets' faces as the Scan unspooled their atoms and unwrote them.

"Yeah," Rose whispered. She pressed her foot forward again, pressing it to the side of his ribcage much more gently than she had before. He had to resist the urge to lean into the touch.

"Anyway, I followed them and found a small group of other Gullinets. They gave me a little fruit and introduced themselves and here's the kicker, there's a man there named-"

"Terry-K3!" Rose had jerked upright. She pulled her arm free from him and was yanking at the last of the bandages, "We have to go! Belinda-9 is so sad- we have to let her know he's alive!"

He reached out and took her arm back, smoothing his fingers over the revealed skin. He told himself he was checking for any remaining contusions, but in reality he just needed the reassurance that she was once more whole and healthy. She allowed the gentle touch for a few seconds before she grasped his hands with her other one, stilling their movement, her fingers were hot against his.

He looked up at her. She was seated at the very edge of the exam table, leaned slightly forward. Her hair had begun to escape the loose tie she'd tried to use to contain it, she had a smudge of dirt across her nose and her lower lip was cracked. He swallowed.

"Doctor?" she asked. Her eyes burned into his. Once more he could feel his hearts pounding away.

Her left index finger twitched against his hand.

In later years he would never remember who moved first.

In the end it did not matter.

The concept of a catalyst originated in chemistry. See, if you took a supersaturated solution, a concoction pushed past it's natural limits through extraordinary means, heat and pressure and forcing elements together which may never have met- you take that solution and you add one thing, one little drop or chip or particle and suddenly the solution changes.

Precipitate.

Rapid crystallization.

Two individuals surged forward to meet in the middle, desperation and worry and fondness and fear and no small measure of love precipitated out and away until all that remained was hands on faces and lips on lips and breath shared between two sets of lungs.


End file.
